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In each of the past seven years, major tech companies have released diversity reports, charting the number of women and people of color they employ. The numbers are reported to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, but companies have dedicated more and more resources to publicly displaying their commitments to diversity. The displays are impressive. The results are not.
These companies spend millions on targeted outreach and strategic partnerships, but the results change little from year to year. Between 2014 and 2020, for example, the share of Black and Latinx tech workers at Facebook each increased by less than 2 percentage points.
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Pinterest isn’t supposed to be a website for women. There’s nothing inherently female about curating images on the internet. But women still constitute 70 percent of Pinterest’s user base, and the site has only gotten more female over time, in part because its algorithm is self-reinforcing. The more people who come to Pinterest looking for so-called female content, the more Pinterest prioritizes that kind of content, and the cycle continues.
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But there’s another reason: Pinterest has a reputation for being one of the nicest corners of the internet. If you want a man to shout at you, you can go to Reddit or Twitter. But if you want to trade ideas for reindeer-themed cupcakes, or medium-length beach wave hairstyles, or DIY boho-style twinkle-light canopy beds, well, Pinterest is the place for you. When the pandemic started, and people began cutting their own hair and launching their own