A chart to understand the gender ratio of Silicon Valley technology companies

Until recently, gender and racial diversity data at some of Silicon Valley’s largest tech companies was a mystery, with the companies keeping the data secret on the grounds that it could cause competitive harm.

The iron curtain of secrecy finally began to lift this summer, when social networking giant Facebook released its data for the first time in June. Google, Apple and Yahoo all released their own data around the same time.

As expected, the data shows, as expected by the public, that there is a lack of gender and racial diversity within these Silicon Valley giants: female employees are underrepresented, and people other than white or Asian are discriminated against.

According to an infographic provided by the website Information Is Beautiful, the diversity data of Silicon Valley's 18 largest technology companies compared to the top 50 American companies highlights a problem: Silicon Valley still has a long way to go in this area.

As shown in the figure, whether in social networks such as Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter, or in technology giants such as Amazon, Apple, Dell, Google and Intel, the proportion of female employees is obviously at a disadvantage. Semiconductor manufacturer NVIDIA has the lowest proportion of female employees, only 16%, while the highest is e-commerce giant eBay, reaching 42%. In contrast, women account for 51% of the US population, while the average proportion of female employees in the top 50 US companies is 46%.

The chart also shows that white employees have an absolute advantage in Silicon Valley technology companies. Interestingly, Asians, who only account for 4% of the U.S. population, account for a relatively high proportion of the total number of employees in these companies. Nvidia has the largest proportion, reaching 44%, while HP has the largest proportion, reaching 6%, which is still higher than the proportion in the population. In contrast, the average proportion of Asian employees in the top 50 U.S. companies is only 10%.

At the same time, the proportion of Hispanics, blacks, mixed races and other races in the total number of employees in Silicon Valley technology companies is at a low level. Taking blacks as an example, Amazon has the highest proportion of black employees in Silicon Valley companies, reaching 15%; the lowest are photo sharing service Pinterest and Nvidia, which are only 1%. Except for Amazon and Dell (10%), the proportion of black employees in other Silicon Valley companies has not reached double digits. In contrast, the proportion of blacks in the US population is 12%, and the average proportion of black employees in the top 50 US companies is also 12%.

In addition to the infographic itself, the Beauty of Information website also published the dataset used to create this infographic.

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