Microsoft Diversity Report: women less than one third of the workforce
Microsoft showed improvements in gender diversity of its workforce over the past year and moved closer to its target of doubling the number of Black and African American managers and senior employees by 2025 in the U.S.
In its 2021 Diversity and Inclusion report, the Redmond-based tech giant said that since 2017 its core Microsoft workforce grew 41.6% globally, and 35.4% in the U.S. Women now represent 29.7% of its global workforce, an increase of 1.1 percentage points since 2020.
The company has also achieved some gains year over year at the leadership level among women globally. Women in its global workforce are 27.1% of managers, 22.0% of directors, and 21.1% of partners and executives. While representation of female executives went down 0.6 percentage points from 2019 to 2020, it increased by 1.0 percentage points in 2021, resulting in executive representation of 25.0%.
Closer to doubling the number of Black directors and senior employees
In the wake of the George Floyd protests and Black Lives Matter’s movement, Microsoft offered in 2020 a range of initiatives to boost its support of racially diverse employees, pledging among others to double its number of Black and African American managers and senior employees by 2025 in the U.S.
More than a year later, the company said that it has made meaningful moves toward those objectives. Black and African American employees now represent 5.7% of its U.S. workforce, up 0.9 percentage points since 2020. According to Microsoft, this is the strongest year-over-year representation increase in five reporting periods.
The shift was seen across all roles, with the biggest leap coming at the executive level, which went from 3.7% of the workforce up to 5.6%.
With those improvements, Microsoft says that it’s nearly 40% of the way toward its goal of doubling the number of Black and African American directors, partners and executives within five years.
Representation of Hispanic and Latinx employees also increased by 0.5% year over year to reach 7.0% of the company’s U.S. workforce. Asian employees, a category that includes more than a dozen different ethnic groups, now represent 35.4% of our U.S. workforce, an increase of 0.7 percentage points compared to 2020.
“This past year was a challenging time for so many people, communities and organizations. Ongoing acts of hate and violence in the U.S. and around the world have continued to move racial injustice to the forefront of social consciousness, while the global pandemic has exacerbated inequities and upended our lives,” says Microsoft chief diversity officer Lindsay-Rae McIntyre.
“In the face of these realities, the sense of urgency to solve some of the biggest systemic problems of equality and inclusion is palpable. This report is an opportunity for us to quantify the impact of our work. Measurement and data are important to us, not only because they allow us to recognize progress, but also because it enables us to identify avenues and opportunities to do better.”
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