Facebook plans to double women workforce globally in the next five years

Facebook aims to double the percentage of women working at the social media giant around the world over the next five years, while simultaneously doubling the number of black and Hispanic employees in the US, setting new diversity goals for the organisation.

The world's largest social media company also wants half of its US workforce to be from underrepresented groups by 2024.

"We envision a company where in five years, at least 50 percent of our workforce is made up of women, people who are Black, Hispanic, Native American, Pacific Islanders, people with two or more ethnicities, people with disabilities and veterans," Maxine Williams, Facebook's Chief Diversity Officer, wrote in a blog post on Tuesday.

Facebook released the new targets alongside its annual diversity report, which details the ethnic and gender breakdown of its workforce. 

"In doing this, we aim to double our number of women globally and black and Hispanic employees in the US. It will be a company that reflects and better serves the people on our platforms, services and products," she added.

In the report, the company said women currently make up 36.9 percent of staff, up from 36.3 percent last year, and 31 percent in 2014.

At senior leadership level, women account for 32.6 percent of staff, up from 30 percent last year. 

Williams said the company had achieved higher representation of women in leadership by focusing on hiring and growing female leaders. In technical roles, though, women account for just 23 percent of staff.

The proportion of black and Hispanic staff in the company stands at 3.8 and 5.2 per cent of Facebook's workforce respectively, up from 3.5 and 4.9 per cent in 2018.

Facebook said on Tuesday it had increased the number of black women at the company 25-fold since 2014. For black men, this was tenfold.

Facebook has put the most effort into diversifying its technical workforce, "so there is an irony and a frustration on our part that we have not been able to grow more," she added.

Last November, a now-former employee went public with an internal blog post saying Facebook had a "black people problem," and that the company was not doing enough to support black employees or black users.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People also encouraged a Facebook boycott in late 2018 after it was learned that Russians using Facebook to influence the 2016 US election heavily targeted African Americans.

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