Women are a significant minority at Yahoo, according to its newly released diversity report. Women make up 37 percent of Yahoo’s global workforce, while men compose 62 percent (roughly 1 percent of employees either said “Other” or didn’t disclose their gender). Women only occupy 15 percent of Yahoo’s technical jobs, and 23 percent of its leadership positions; they’re better represented in non-tech roles, where they make up 57 percent of headcount. Yahoo declined to break out its gender percentages by country. Yahoo’s diversity report also offered some insight into its employees’ racial composition within the United States, where 50 percent of employees are white, 39 percent are Asian, 4 percent are Hispanic, 2 percent are black, 2 percent identified as two+ races, and 2 percent went by “Other/Not Disclosed.” Asian employees occupied a majority of Yahoo’s technical jobs, at 57 percent, while whites filled 63 percent of non-tech positions and 78 percent of leadership roles. “These statistics are only a part of the story—Yahoo works to ensure that our existing employees feel welcome and supported during their time at the company,” read Yahoo’s accompanying (and thoroughly boilerplate) note. “Overall, our goal at Yahoo is to create a workplace culture that attracts and retains all talents, regardless of background, and to help our people grow to their full potential.” But Yahoo’s numbers are only slightly more balanced than those at archrival Google, which released its own diversity numbers at the end of May. Some 30 percent of Google employees are women; 61 percent are white, 30 percent Asian, 4 percent two+ races, 3 percent Hispanic, 2 percent black and 1 percent “Other.” Google’s Senior Vice President of People Operations Laszlo Bock suggested in a blog posting at the time that his company “is not where we want to be when it comes to diversity, and it’s hard to address these kinds of challenges if you’re not prepared to discuss them openly.” Any number of Silicon Valley companies (including Google) blame the lack of diversity within their ranks on the “pipeline” of universities that feed a constant stream of computer-science graduates into the workforce, and argue that those schools need to encourage more women and minorities to chase STEM degrees. Whatever the cause, the progressive unveiling of diversity reports could spark more discussion about balancing employee demographics.

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