Facebook staff diversity little changed over past year

SAN FRANCISCO Facebook Inc (FB.O) released new diversity data Friday that showed the number of women and minorities has remained little changed over the past year.

The number of women increased only 1 percentage point, from 31 percent to 32 percent. The number of black people, Hispanics and people of two or more races remained unchanged at 2 percent, 4 percent and 3 percent, respectively.

Diversity among the social network’s tech workers was far less even, with 84 percent men and 16 percent women. Among non-tech workers, 48 percent are men and 52 percent women.

Facebook’s senior leadership is still overwhelmingly white and male. Women comprise only 23 percent of the senior leadership while men comprise 77 percent, unchanged from last year.

More Asian people made up senior leadership with 21 percent this year, compared to 19 percent last year, but the number of senior-level Hispanics decreased from 4 percent to 3 percent.

In a blog post, Facebook listed several initiatives to increase its diversity. They included a Facebook University training programme, which invites college freshmen from underrepresented groups to spend a summer working alongside Facebook mentors, and a training course geared toward conversations about stereotypes and bias.

(Editing by Bernadette Baum)

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