Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter followed Google in releasing demographics of their work force, shedding light on how the tech industry is operating. Going through these revelations is an eye-opener on how gender and ethnicity are at play in the Silicon Valley.

Google has nearly 50,000 employees; 70 percent of them are men (global work force), and 61 percent of them white (only in the US). If we only take the technical jobs within the company, men would make 83 percent of the work force. On the leadership levels, 79 percent of leaders are men. Dominantly 91 percent of the staff are whites or Asians, while African-Americans and Hispanics constitute not more than 5 percent of the number of the staff.

Facebook is not that different; 69 percent of the staff are males and similar to Google, majority of them — 91 percent — whites or Asians. At the technical jobs, males also dominate at 85 percent. Female staff make 47 percent of their non-technical jobs. On the senior levels, 77 percent of Facebook leaders are men.

LinkedIn follows the same pattern, out of its 5,400 staff, 61 percent are males and again 91 percent of them whites and Asians. Twitter was the last to report its staff demographics, reporting that out of its 3,000 staff, 70 percent are males, and 88 percent are Asians or whites. At the tech jobs, 90 percent are males, while 50 percent are females in non-technical ones. And men form 72 percent of Twitter leadership.

It does not need a lot of brain power to notice that men are controlling the tech industry and running the Silicon Valley. There is a huge gender gap in the technical industry to the point that it begs many questions about education, employment opportunities, stereotyping and entrepreneurial support directed toward females in the industry.

“Google is not where we want to be when it comes to diversity,” Laszlo Bock, Google’s senior vice president of people operations, wrote in a post, according to Mashable, “And it’s hard to address these kinds of challenges if you’re not prepared to discuss them openly, and with the facts,” he continued.

“We’re not where we’d like to be,” said Jeff Weiner, the CEO of LinkedIn. “We want and can do better than (what we’re doing),” he continued, according to the same source. Janet Van Huysse, Twitter’s vice president of diversity and inclusion wrote in a blog post “We are keenly aware that Twitter is part of an industry that is marked by dramatic imbalances in diversity — and we are no exception.”

The other noticeable outcome of the published data is that whites and Asians are the two ethnicities dominating the industry as well, opening and raising similar questions and concerns over the opportunities given to minorities to pursue a career in the tech world.

It would be really interesting to see similar data fetched from many industries in the Kingdom, say education or telecommunication as examples. I won’t be surprised to see even worse gaps in gender balance. Unfortunately, despite the dismal situation, there has been no effort by the leadership in the public and private domain to identify the gender gap in Saudi workplace or try to find solution to the issue. Have you ever heard of a position in any Saudi organization that is titled the “Manager of Diversity“?

We, still, have a long way to go.