Twitter to keep us posted on diversity drive

After releasing its internal diversity figures for the first time last year, Twitter has taken another step and publicly stated its targets to improve those numbers.

The number of women working for the social media giant has risen by 4% from last year to 34% of the overall workforce, while this number drops down to 13% when looking at tech roles.

It’s also pretty dire when looking at leadership roles, with only 22% of Twitter’s top employees being women, only up 1% from last year.

Like most large tech companies, the Twitter workforce is made up predominantly of white males.

But while practically every huge tech company has now publicly released stats like these and promised to do better, Twitter has joined Pinterest in posting tangible and practical goals to go along with them.

It has taken internal hiring and diversity goals from the direct messages to the public feed.

By the end of next year, Twitter wants 35% of its overall workforce to be women, and for females to make up a quarter of its leadership team.

It aims to increase the number of underrepresented minorities to 11% in the US, to 9% in tech roles and to 6% in leadership roles.

A blog post by vice president of diversity and inclusion Janet Van Huysse also lists a number of partnerships and programs Twitter is now involved with to try to help achieve these targets.

“If our aim is to build a company we can really be proud of – one that’s more inclusive and diverse – we need to make sure it’s a great place for both new and current employees to work and to grow,” Van Huysse says.

“We see opportunity rather than a challenge: an opportunity to build a platform and a company that will better serve the diverse community on Twitter and the increasingly diverse one at Twitter.”

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