Twitter Inc is setting modest goals to diversify its workforce while it fights a proposed class-action lawsuit that says the online social networking service discriminates against its female employees.
The hiring targets were released on Friday along with data showing that Twitter primarily employs white and Asian men in high-paying technology jobs, like most of its industry peers.
Twitter is aiming to fill 16 percent of its technology jobs with a woman next year, up from 13 percent now. The San Francisco company also wants women to make up 25 percent of its leadership roles, from 22 percent now, and is promising to hire more blacks and Hispanics.
Former Twitter engineer Tina Huang filed a lawsuit in March attacking the company’s treatment of women. The complaint said Twitter has a history of bypassing qualified women for promotions. Twitter has denied the allegations.
Based on a total of about 4,100 workers, Twitter employs about 1,400 women, or 34 percent of its total payroll. The company wants 35 percent of its total workforce to be comprised of women next year.
“We’re holding ourselves accountable to these measurable goals, as should you,” Twitter executive Janet Van Huysse wrote in a blogpost.
Other major technology companies, including Google Inc, Facebook Inc and Apple Inc, also are trying to lessen their long-time dependence on white and Asian men to fill programming jobs that typically pay between US$100,000 and US$300,000.
Unlike Twitter, not all tech companies have established a concrete number of women, blacks and Hispanics that they are hoping to employ, nor when their workforce might look more like the overall population.
The composition of most big tech employers did not significantly change in the first year since they began acknowledging their diversity problems under pressure from a coalition led by US civil rights leader Jesse Jackson.
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