Microsoft is making progress in closing the gender gap among its workers. But it still has a long way to go.
Those are some of the findings in the tech giant’s latest diversity report, which breaks down the demographics of its employees.
Women make up 29% of Microsoft’s global workforce, up from 24% a year ago, Microsoft said on Friday.
The results show a company that is still largely staffed by white and Asian males. The make-up largely dovetails that other tech companies like Google (GOOG), Facebook (FB) and Twitter (TWTR) that have also recently published their employee demographics amid criticism that they are failing to do enough to create a more diverse workplace.
Lisa Brummel, Microsoft’s executive vice president of human resources, called diversity and inclusion a “business imperative” for her company. While Brummel admitted it made progress, she says more work remains for the future.
“Diversity needs to be a source of strength and competitive advantage for us,” she said. “We can all agree that much work remains to be done to increase the diversity of our company and the tech industry.”
Microsoft’s demographic breakdown, published on a new website broke down, show that the company is overwhelmingly white and Asian. Employees of other races are few and far between.
Whites accounted for 60.6% of employees while Asians made up 28.9%. Meanwhile, 5.1% of workers were Hispanics, 3.5% were black and 1.2% were multi-racial.
The company also said that the percentage of senior executive women and minorities bumped up to 27% from 24% in 2013. In addition, the percentage of women and minorities sitting on the Microsoft board of directors rose to 40%, from 33% in 2013.
The news comes as the percentage of women nominated for boards at large U.S. companies doubled since 2008, according to Fortune, citing a report from proxy advisory group Institutional Shareholder Services.
Fortune also recently ranked tech companies on employee diversity, with Pandora claiming the top spot for overall gender diversity with 51% of its workers male and 49% female.
