Tech workers: Donald Trump's America is forcing us to address diversity
Diversity and inclusion shouldn't be political, but in 2017, it is.
Software company Atlassian came out on Wednesday with one of the first surveys about diversity to be published under the Trump Administration. And things are different now than they were five short months ago.
Almost half of tech workers — 48 percent — told Atlassian that Donald Trump's election as president made them care more about diversity. Forty-six percent of tech employees said they cared the same about diversity before and after Nov. 8.
More than just opinions, one in four tech employees said Trump's election made them do something related to diversity and inclusion. For tech workers who were spurred to action — as many people have been across industries and across America — 56 percent said they tried to learn more about the experiences of colleagues who were different from them. Half said they engaged their company leaders in conversations about how to create a more inclusive work environment, and 41 percent said they "positively changed [an] attitude towards coworkers different from me."
About a third of tech employees said the election hurt their companies' existing diversity efforts. They didn't say why, but the Trump administration's various travel bans have been one policy to directly affect Silicon Valley.
When asked in which area of diversity and inclusion their companies had made the most progress, the most tech workers said gender, followed by age and then race and sexual orientation. Atlassian included in its report the statistics that Silicon Valley's workforce is 2 percent black, 3 percent Latino and 24 percent women.
Atlassian conducted its survey in January among almost 1,500 tech workers, not limited to the Bay Area.
Two months into the Trump Administration, is it time to survey again?
Topics Diversity
Emma Hinchliffe is a business reporter at Mashable. Before joining Mashable, she covered business and metro news at the Houston Chronicle.
