Workplace

Twitter's staff is 43% women. They only net 37% of compensation.

Twitter's latest diversity report showed gains in representation at the technical and leadership levels. But it's still facing a pay gap.

Twitter's staff is 43% women. They only net 37% of compensation.

Twitter

Photo: Sara Kurfeß/Unsplash

Twitter released its second quarter diversity report Thursday, which reflected growing numbers of women and underrepresented minorities in technical and leadership roles. But the company still faces gaps in representation and pay equity: In the last quarter of 2020, it found that while women make up about 43% of Twitter's staff, they only take home about 37% of the company's overall compensation.


The gap also existed for underrepresented minorities at Twitter. "In the US, 6.3% identified as Black and netted 4.7% of total compensation, and 5.8% identified as Latinx and netted 4.8% of total compensation," the company's 2020 annual report reads.

This type of pay equity analysis is relatively unique because it looks beyond whether women and underrepresented minorities in a certain role make as much as their white or male counterparts. That's a metric Twitter has been studying for a while now, and according to the 2020 report, women at Twitter earned 100% of what their equivalent male peers earn. The same goes for underrepresented minorities and their white peers.

But the study looking at overall share of compensation gets at a deeper question: Are women and underrepresented minorities holding as many high-paid positions as their male and white peers? The answer appears to be: Not yet.

Twitter attributed this discrepancy to the fact that there are fewer women and underrepresented minorities in leadership and senior technical roles. "These insights underscore the urgency with which we must accelerate efforts already underway to increase representation and retention of women and [underrepresented minorities] in leadership and technical positions via our hiring, talent development and promotion practices," the report read.

The company's latest diversity report for the second quarter of 2021 shows it's making some progress on that front. The percentage of Black employees in technical roles has nearly tripled since Twitter started reporting these stats in 2017, and the percentage of Black employees in leadership roles has nearly doubled. Latinx representation in technical roles has also tripled. All of those numbers, though, still hover in the single digits. The percentage of women in technical roles also increased to about 29% last year, up more than 10 percentage points since 2017, while the number of women in leadership stayed roughly the same.

Along with its diversity stats, Twitter also shared details about its business resource groups, which are communities for employees from different backgrounds and demographics. In 2020, the company began paying leaders of these groups, recognizing that for some, leading the groups came with a heavy workload that went unrecognized by their managers. "The work they are responsible for driving is central to our journey to becoming the world's most diverse, inclusive, and accessible tech company," read a company blog post by Twitter's vice president of people experience, Dalana Brand.

Correction: This story has been updated throughout with Twitter's Q2 numbers. An earlier version included Twitter's 2020 stats.

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