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It’s moving slowly, but Pinterest and other tech companies are becoming less white and less male

Pinterest released its latest diversity report on Tuesday.

A Pinterest employee in a red Pinterest shirt welcomes guests to the company headquarters for an event.
A Pinterest employee in a red Pinterest shirt welcomes guests to the company headquarters for an event.
Josh Edelson / Getty

Slowly but surely, Pinterest is getting more diverse.

The company released its annual workforce diversity report on Tuesday, and claims that underrepresented minorities now make up 9 percent of its workforce, up from just 7 percent in 2016. Pinterest is also hiring more female employees: Women account for 45 percent of Pinterest’s workforce, up from 44 percent last year, according to this latest report.

The data represents advances compared to 2016 government data published earlier this year. And while the changes from year to year may seem small, the company is chipping away at those diversity proportions.

Here’s how Pinterest’s workforce has changed since 2014:

Women make up a larger percentage of Pinterest’s workforce than they did three years ago, and they also claim more technical jobs inside the company, roles that have traditionally been dominated by men. Women still account for 19 percent of Pinterest’s leadership positions, the same percentage the company had in 2014, but up slightly over the past two years.

Underrepresented minorities — people who are black, LatinX or Native American — also make up a larger percentage of Pinterest’s overall workforce. Minority employees make up a larger percentage of Pinterest’s technical and leadership groups than they did three years ago.

Here’s how Pinterest’s diversity report compares to similar reports from other tech companies. Silicon Valley has been making a push over the past few years to diversify the tech industry for a number of reasons, one of which is to bring in employees with a more diverse range of experiences and ideas. As you can see, Pinterest has a higher percentage of female employees than most other Silicon Valley giants.


Candice Morgan, Pinterest’s head of Inclusion & Diversity, says the company has instituted a number of programs in order to increase diversity, including Pinterest’s own version of the NFL’s Rooney Rule, which requires teams to interview at least one minority candidate for top jobs like head coach. Pinterest’s version of the rule requires the company to interview at least one qualified female and underrepresented minority for each senior-level opening.

Pinterest also has an apprenticeship program to encourage candidates from nontraditional tech backgrounds to apply, and requires employees to complete an unconscious-bias training course in their first week on the job.


This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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