Google aims for diverse I/O crowd
Hoping to woo more women, minorities to its tech conference
Google’s annual conference for software developers looks a lot like Google itself: Mostly male, white and Asian.
Unwilling to accept the status quo, the tech giant is leading the charge to shake up the lopsided demographics of tech conferences and, at I/O, Google says it’s making progress in closing the gender and racial gap.
The percentages of women and minorities attending the developers conference have not budged much since last year, but the numbers have, Google says. Women account for 23% of conference-goers, same as last year, but I/O is 25% bigger, according to Google. Women accounted for 16% of attendees in 2014 and 8% in 2013.
For the first time this year, Google released the racial and ethnic make-up of attendees: 41% are white and 2% are black, in line with 2015; 6% are Hispanic, up from 5%; and 30% are Asian, up from 26%.
Google declined to say how many people are attending I/O, which starts Wednesday. More than 5,000 attended last year.
“Last year was the first year we requested that people volunteer ethnicity and race data so we could have a better understanding of diversity. What we have seen in just one year with outreach efforts is an increase in black, Asian, Hispanic and multiracial representation,” Natalie Villalobos, Google’s head of global programs for Women Techmakers, told USA TODAY.
For Google, this is part of a broader effort to increase the numbers and raise the visibility of women and minorities in an industry where they are significantly underrepresented, particularly in technical roles.
Two years ago, facing mounting criticism from civil rights leaders, Google took a major step toward addressing gender and racial imbalance in its workforce and the tech industry at large: It publicly divulged that lack of diversity. At Google, seven out of 10 employees are men. Most employees are white (60%) and Asian (31%). Latinos made up just 3% of the workforce, African Americans 2%— a far cry from Google reflecting the diversity of its customers in the U.S. and around the globe.
“We are not trying to create a short-term solution or a patch. We are thinking about what are the lasting cross-cultural changes we can make,” Villalobos said.