This article is more than 1 year old

Mincing Nokia's factories made Microsoft a sausage factory

Redmond's diversity report reveals women bore brunt of 'restructure of phone business'

Microsoft's revealed that gutting Nokia has made a dent in its diversity data.

Redmond's new Global Diversity & Inclusion update says “... primarily due to the restructuring of our phone hardware business – we experienced an overall decline in the percentage of women working at Microsoft worldwide, from 29 percent (Sept. 30, 2014) to 26.8 percent (Sept. 30, 2015).”

“The workforce reductions resulting from the restructure of our phone hardware business impacted factory and production facilities outside the U.S. that produce handsets and hardware, and a higher percentage of those jobs were held by women. This was the main cause of the decline in female representation at Microsoft.”

Gwen Houston, Microsoft's general manager for global diversity and inclusion writes that “ I want to emphasize that we are not satisfied with where we are today regarding the percentage of women in our workforce. Our senior leaders continue to be deeply committed to doing everything possible to improve these numbers.”

Houston's mostly pleased with Microsoft's diversity performance, noting that:

  • The percentage of women on our Senior Leadership Team is now at 27.2 percent, the highest it has ever been.
  • Pending shareholder approval in December, women and ethnic minorities will hold five of our 11 board positions.The number of African-American/Black corporate vice presidents more than doubled this year, increasing from 1.3 percent to 2.9 percent.
  • Worldwide, 30.6 percent of all university hires coming into Microsoft are women, up from 27.7 percent the previous year. The number of women being hired into technical/engineering roles from universities worldwide has increased to 26.1 percent, up from 23.7 percent the previous year.
  • The number of female interns worldwide at Microsoft is also increasing steadily, up to 31.8 percent this year compared to 28.0 percent last year.

Houston also pledges that Microsoft is intent on "increasing diversity and building a more inclusive culture". ®

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like