Despite Silicon Valley companies' claims that they're committed to diversity, an analysis by The Guardian shows a striking trend among male tech leaders.
Earlier this week, Motherboard reported Tesla CEO Elon Musk did not follow any females on Twitter — until Oct. 4, when Motherboard's story went live. "Guess how many women Elon Musk follows on Twitter? Hint: same number of people currently on Mars," Motherboard tweeted.
In response, Mr. Musk tweeted, "I use twitter for news orgs. My Insta has [the] same [amount of] women as men." He then began following GQ Magazine writer Caity Weaver's Twitter account.
The Guardian then launched an analysis examining the Twitter accounts of male tech leaders who follow 250 accounts or less. All of them followed between two and 11 times as many males as females.
Here is a breakdown of The Guardian's analysis.
Note: The Guardian's analysis was conducted prior to its article's publication Oct. 4. Twitter followings may have changed since then.
- Google CEO Sundar Pichai follows 267 Twitter accounts. While 238 are men, only 21 are women.
- Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella follows 165 accounts, 78 of which are men and 39 of which are women.
- Apple CEO Tim Cook follows 51 accounts. Twenty are men, four are women and the remainder are brands.
- Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky follows 58 men and 12 women out of a total of 92 accounts.
- Netflix CEO Reed Hastings follows 60 accounts. Forty-four are men and 10 are women.
- Microsoft Founder Bill Gates follows 169 accounts, 57 of which are men and 12 of which are women.
- Alphabet Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt follows 153 men and 25 women out of a total of 235 accounts.
- Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla follows 257 accounts, including 175 men and 25 women.
- Though he has an account, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos does not follow any Twitter accounts.
- Peter Thiel, cofounder of PayPal, also has a Twitter account but doesn't follow doesn't follow anyone.