Facebook releases workforce diversity, reports 70% male employees

MENLO PARK, Calif., June 25 (UPI) -- Facebook released a report of its workforce diversity, which shows that the company is male dominated, a trend seen across Silicon Valley tech companies.

This is the first time the social network has released its diversity figures and is sure to heat up the already intense debate surrounding the lack of diversity in the work place. The report shows that 70 percent of Facebook's employes are male, 57 percent are white and 34 percent are Asians.

Facebook's senior management figure are even worse. One percent of senior level employees were black, while four percent were Hispanic and an overwhelming 74 percent were white.

Despite having Sheryl Sandberg as its COO, women make up only 15 percent of Facebook's technical employees and 23 percent of senior managers. Sandberg has been a strong advocate of increasing the roll of women in senior management roles.

"Since our strategic diversity team launched last year, we're already seeing improved new hire figures and lower attrition rates for underrepresented groups," Maxine Williams, Facebook's global head of diversity, said in a post. "As these numbers show, we have more work to do -- a lot more."

Facebook's numbers are only slightly worse that other tech companies. Google is 30 percent female, while Yahoo is 37 percent and LinkedIn is at 39 percent.

Facebook said that it is focussed on improving diversity among its employees by increasing hiring of underrepresented groups. Apart from hiring employees from such groups, it has started a an internship program for undergraduate college freshmen from underrepresented groups called Facebook University.