Silicon Valley Companies Scrutinized for Lack of Workforce Diversity

Twitter said that it is looking to diversify as it has been hiring too many white and Asian men to fill high-paying technology jobs, and they aren't the only companies in the Silicon Valley doing so.

The lack of Twitter's workforce diversity was debunked in a data released by the San Francisco company behind the social network service.

The data revealed that 70 percent of Twitter's worldwide workforce was made up of men. In the US, 90 percent of Twitter's employees are either white or Asian. The numbers look even worse for technology companies that pay the highest salaries. Women account for only 10 percent of the workforce worldwide.

Twitter's lack of diversity issue can also be found at Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and LinkedIn. Facebook's numbers do not in any way reflect its user base's diversity.

All of the companies mentioned have released their diversity numbers, an effect from the civil rights campaign by activist Reverend Jesse Jackson and his Rainbow PUSH coalition.

Jackson has spent a lot of time trying to pressure Silicon Valley companies to initiate diversification of its workforce as the booming technology industry will be in high demand in the coming future.

Many of the jobs pay high salaries and give employees the option of owning stocks, which can be worth millions of dollars.

Jackson labeled Twitter's diversity numbers as "pathetic" and said that solving the problem was a step in the right direction.

"We are keenly aware that Twitter is part of an industry that is marked by dramatic imbalances in diversity," Janet Van Huysse, the company's vice president of diversity and inclusion, wrote in a blog post.

Twitter supports programs that teach woman how to program computers, code and introduced internal training programs designed to balance out biases.  

Perhaps the companies will begin an initiative to balance out their workforce sooner than later.