14 DAY TRIAL // Although this is a few months later than other companies, Amazon joins in on the party and reveals its diversity report. After all is said and done, Amazon’s numbers look only a smidge better than a lot of other tech companies in the US.
Amazon’s report indicates that, at a global level, 63 percent of its employees are male and 37 percent female. It’s also important to note that at a global level, men occupy 75 percent of all management jobs, with the rest going to the women of the company.
As for the division of ethnicities, in the United States 60 percent of workers are white, while another 15 percent identify as black. 13 percent are declared to be white, while 9 percent are Hispanic. Once again, this is marginally better than in other companies in the tech sector.
It’s white employees that hold the most managerial jobs in the United States, too, namely some 71 percent of them. Asian employees come in second and occupy 18 percent of all leading jobs in the company. Both Hispanic and black workers hold four percent of the management jobs in the US headquarters.
A lot of work is left to be done at Amazon, just like in a lot of other companies in the United States. The company is, however, working on improving things, if the report it issued is any indication.
Working to diversify
The company talks about the various ways in which it’s trying to improve the way things work at the company. For instance, there are “Affinity Groups” that provide input on how the company should work to represent the various groups within Amazon and increase the diversity.
“With executive and company sponsorship, our Affinity Groups play an important role in building internal networks for career development and in reaching out to communities outside the company,” the company states about its project.
These Affinity Group meetings host discussions on topics important to the company’s workers, from panel discussions on career development, to conversations with leaders.
There are also efforts to bring in more women at Amazon via its Amazon Women in Engineering program, which is dedicated to making the company a “great place to work for technical women.”
There are also some efforts to encourage diversity in the early stages of education, Amazon notes, as the company partners with the Anita Borg Institute and Code.org to help bring female students and students of color into science, technology, engineering and mathematics academic tracks.
