Twitter's staff male-dominated

Twitter has become the latest tech firm to admit that most of its
staff members are men.

Releasing its gender and ethnic diversity data, the firm said it had
"a lot of work to do".

It joins Facebook, Google and Yahoo in admitting that women are in the
minority in their workforces.

An expert warned that the industry needed to address the issue as a
matter of urgency.

Matthew Gwyther, editor of Management Today, said it was surprising
that a social media platform that was popular across gender and ethnic
divides would have issues with representation in its staffing.

"But maybe it is not that surprising after all because, as we have
seen, the industry has this issue and it had better put it in order
before it becomes embarrassing," he said.

The data released by Twitter on Wednesday showed that, overall, only
30 per cent of its staff were female. The data followed a trend among
tech companies that showed an under-representation of women.

Twitter's figures were roughly comparable with those of Facebook,
whose data showed that 31 per cent of its staff were female. Google
said 30 per cent of its staff members were women, while Yahoo reported
38 per cent.

But the ethnicity data, which was only provided for the USA, showed
that white people made up a smaller proportion of the workforce than
they did of the country's population.

According to the US 2010 Census, around 64 per cent of the country was
white, while around 16 per cent was Hispanic and around 12 per cent
black. Asian people accounted for nearly five per cent, while
approximately two per cent were mixed race.

Native Americans and Pacific Islanders, as well as other races
accounted for around one per cent of the population.

Twitter reported that, relative to their proportions of the country's
population as a whole, the white, black and Hispanic communities were
under-represented. Asian people, however, were significantly
over-represented.

Other racial backgrounds were broadly proportional.
The same was true of Google, Facebook and Yahoo.
Twitter's data also showed that the gender imbalance was greater in
leadership positions, than in overall staffing.

The company said that addressing such an imbalance was a key to
running a successful business. "But we want to be more than a good
business; we want to be a business that we are proud of," read a
statement.

It added: "To that end, we are joining some peer companies by sharing
our ethnic and gender diversity data. And like our peers, we have a
lot of work to do.

"We are keenly aware that Twitter is part of an industry that is
marked by dramatic imbalances in diversity -- and we are no exception."

Research has suggested that the technology industry is not
representative of American levels of diversity.

But the industry is not without female leadership. Marissa Mayer is
chief executive of Yahoo, Meg Whitman holds the same position at
Hewlett Packard and Sheryl Sandberg is Facebook's chief operating
officer.

--BBC