Twitter to have more women employees on board globally by 2016

Women account to almost 21 per cent of twitter users worldwide (Pew research report,2014), yet global the tech company fails to employ more women in their workforce. In an attempt to bridge this gender gap, Twitter in its public declaration has committed to diversify its overall workforce by recruiting more women employees at different levels of the company.

The company which looks to diversify its workforce by the end of the next year has around 4100 employees, of which 34 per cent are women. Its 2016 gender diversity goal is likely to be achieved by inclusion of additional 41 women on board, with no change in headcount. The company has promised to raise the bar of its women employees to 35 per cent, a 1 per cent increase from last year.

Twitter Vice President, Janet van Huysse in a blog post said, “We want the makeup of our company to reflect the vast range of people who use Twitter. Doing so will help us build a product to better serve people around the world”.

Twitter also looks forward to increase women participation at various levels;

•  Increase women representation in tech roles by 3 per cent (currently 13 %)

• Increase women in leadership roles by 3 per cent (currently 22 %)

The social media company also aims to improve its ethnic diversity by having 11 per cent of the underrepresented minorities on board while increasing their representation in tech roles by 2 per cent (currently 9 %). Plans to upgrade the underrepresented minorities in leadership roles for the first time has also been discussed.

Twitter’s is less diverse than Airbnb, eBay and LinkedIn in overall female representation, However it is better off than Facebook and google who fail to have more women leaders on board reports fortune.

Last year, the company had managed to increase its workforce diversity by hiring more women and Hispanics. From 2014, Twitter has increased its women representation by 4 per cent whereas increase in Hispanics representation had stepped up by 1 per cent. However African- Americans representation remains stagnant at 2 per cent.

Twitter has made itself more accountable and transparent by revealing its 2016 new goals publicly. However, the bar raise is slightly disappointing given its wider reach. Pinterest had earlier in the month proposed to increase its workforce diversity in 2016.

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