Silicon Valley race gap getting worse, not better, study shows
But white women are gaining ground at the executive level
Despite pledges from technology companies to crack the minority ceiling, Silicon Valley has a race problem, and it’s getting worse.
Black and Hispanic representation is declining even as strides have been made in closing the gender gap in San Francisco Bay Area technology companies, according to new research published Tuesday by the non-profit Ascend Foundation, which advocates for Asians in business.
The employment data from 2007 to 2015 examined by the Ascend Foundation showed that people of color are being denied opportunities from the entry level to the executive suite and are losing ground in the tech industry, according to Buck Gee, a former vice president and general manager at Cisco Systems who is an Ascend executive advisor and a study co-author.
“One of the overarching findings is that the race gap is much higher than the gender gap alone over the last nine years, and that gap is growing bigger over time,” Gee told USA TODAY last week.
The research is further proof that Silicon Valley is not any closer to addressing sharp racial disparities that threaten to stymie innovation and exclude large swaths of the U.S. workforce.
Sexual harassment and gender discrimination have grabbed headlines in the male-dominated industry, from Ellen Pao’s gender discrimination lawsuit against her former venture capital firm to the Uber sexism scandal that toppled its CEO, to the Labor Department’s pay gap probe of Google. Many in the tech world have focused on recruiting and retaining more women.
White women have benefited from those efforts and are far bet-
For years, Silicon Valley has devoted significant resources to making the tech workforce better reflect the panoply of people it serves, yet it’s still overwhelmingly male and employs few African Americans and Hispanics.
ter represented at the executive level than men and women of color, the Ascend Foundation research shows. Representation of white women in leadership roles improved by 17% between 2007 and 2015. For all other minority groups, the percentage declined.
Asians — the largest racial cohort in the tech industry — were the least likely to become managers and executives. In fact, white men and women are twice as likely to become executives compared to Asians. And Asian women were the least likely to be promoted into executive roles, the research found.
The number of black managers sharply declined from 2007 to 2015 as did the number of black women in the industry. The overall representation of Hispanics also fell, with Hispanics still representing a small fraction of leaders in these companies.
“I am encouraged from a woman’s perspective to see the positive trend in white women breaking through,” Denise Peck, a former vice president at Cisco who is co-author of the research and an Ascend executive adviser, told USA TODAY. “It shows that we could have a positive impact if we decide to focus on women of color and people of color.”
For years, Silicon Valley has devoted significant resources to making the tech workforce better reflect the panoply of people it serves around the globe, yet it’s still overwhelmingly male and employs very few African Americans and Hispanics.
Those initiatives to become more inclusive of women and minorities have come under fire from some rank-and-file and conservative groups who say diversity programs discriminate against white men. The backlash gained national attention with a Google engineer’s controversial internal memo suggesting women were less biologically suited to technical roles. James Damore was fired after the memo became public.
“Denise and I were executives in Silicon Valley, and we see people want to do the right thing,” Gee told USA TODAY. “We hope this data will give them some guidance. The question we have is: Are your programs addressing the right problems and, if they are not making progress, why not?”