No one listens when Amazon reports its diversity numbers - DINT 148
Amazon published its workforce numbers this week and not one major news org published them, signaling a lack of trust in the company to reveal the truth behind the reported stats.
This week, Amazon reported stats on its workforce, including workforce percentage breakdowns by race and gender.
No media organization reported on these numbers. Here’s why …
Amazon:
publishes percentages only, instead of raw numbers, making the data difficult to verify
self-reports its data and doesn’t disclose government filings around race and gender in its workforce
This highlights how far Amazon has fallen from its already low position among Big Tech companies and transparency around workforce demographics.
Former Amazon DEI leader Chanin Kelly-Rae contributed to a Seattle Times article in which she called Amazon out for its lack of transparency around race, gender, and the types of roles workers occupy based on those demographics.
“Amazon should have published numbers of employees in its breakdown, in addition to characterizing the data in percentages, [Chanin Kelly-Rae] said.
She also would have liked to have seen more disaggregation by job type, she said, to track demographic disparities between tech and non-tech roles in Amazon’s corporate offices.”
Here’s a video of Kelly-Rae’s comments:
Amazon notoriously pledged to double the amount of Black people in senior leadership in 2020. At the time, there were reportedly three Black senior leaders at the company.
To this Kelly-Rae responded:
“If the number [of Black executives] they’re doubling is only three, then it doesn’t feel like they’re doing some grand and fantastic thing,” Kelly-Rae said. “If you want to promise true transparency and accountability, let people know what those numbers are.”
When challenged on not providing raw numbers, Amazon Senior Vice President of HR Beth Galletti said, “You [people in diversity and inclusion roles] don’t need the data to do your job.”
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More News at the Intersection of Tech, Race, and Gender
Half of all facial recognition systems are in predominantly Black neighborhoods in London, according to The Voice online. An area with a 40% Black population, Croydon, saw 128,518 of its residents’ faces scanned. This yielded only 133 arrests. The other residents were scanned and are in London law enforcement’s database now, opening to the door to what some call predictive policing or digital policing.
London Assembly Member Zoe Garbett had this to say to The Voice about the monitoring:
“Facial recognition subjects everyone to constant surveillance, which goes against the democratic principle that you shouldn’t be monitored unless there’s a suspicion of wrongdoing.
“The Met’s decision to roll out facial recognition in areas of London with higher Black populations reinforces the troubling assumption that certain communities, such as those in Croydon, Lewisham and Haringey, are more likely to be criminals.”
“How is it fair that you’re more likely to be surveilled simply because you do your shopping on Deptford High Street?”
The UK just inked a four-year deal with live facial recognition vendors to support their expanded surveillance programs, according to Biometrics Update. Live facial rec will use the UK’s already extensive CCTV system to compare faces against facial rec databases in real time. UK law enforcement awarded the $25.2 million contract to NEC, Bedroq (digital infrastructure), and Digital Barriers (video tech).
The country has yet to fill a critical role in regulating facial recognition, the Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner.
But will she hire women? Looking forward to seeing Murati’s development and leadership teams.
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