Amazon Joins Google and Facebook in Exposing Tech’s Gender Gap

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The diversity reports keep on coming.

Following in the footsteps of Apple, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, and others, Amazon has released the diversity statistics of its workforce, and they’re in line with what we’ve seen from its many tech competitors. At the management level, Amazon is largely white and male.

Many have long complained about the gender gap in the tech world—and other diversity issues—but as of late, the groundswell of public discussion has pushed the giants of tech to at least be more open about why their work forces look like. Now, the trick is to find ways of changing the makeup of these companies.

Globally, the Seattle-based company reports, 63 percent of its employees worldwide are men and 37 percent are female as of September 2014. While that gap might not seem so deplorable at first glance, looking at the statistics of its employees in leadership roles tells a different story: In the upper tiers of management, the gulf widens to 75 percent male and 25 percent female.

The ethnic breakdown of Amazon’s workforce isn’t much better. The report, which was based on numbers of the company’s U.S workforce as of July 2014, revealed that 60 percent of its employees are white, 18 percent are black, 13 percent are Asian and 9 percent are Hispanic. Again, at the leadership level, that divide increases: 71 percent of Amazon’s managers are white.

Unlike other technology companies, Amazon did not reveal the racial or gender composition for its technical workers. That may affect its statistics, since many Amazon employees work in distribution centers.

Basically, the overall scorecard for technology companies is still looking pretty bleak. Some companies, notably Apple and eBay, vowed to improve their diversity numbers, especially for female and minority workers. Amazon made no statement to that effect, instead choosing to detail its internal efforts, such as the Black Employee Network, Amazon Women in Engineering, and Latinos@Amazon, alongside the release of its workplace diversity report.

Amazon says it will update its diversity page as it grows these affinity groups and other programs.