In China, Didi speeds far ahead of Uber in gender diversity

A junction in Shanghai. Photo credit: Carlos ZGZ.

Didi, China’s top ride-hailing startup, has more than twice the rate of women in technology-related jobs compared to Uber.

Women make up 37 percent of tech roles – “including product managers, engineers, and data scientists” – at Didi, said the company in a statement. It comes days after Uber published its first diversity report, showing female staffers holding just 15 percent of techie jobs.

Beijing-based Didi, which boasts nearly 400 million users across more than 400 Chinese cities, confirmed to Tech in Asia that its measure doesn’t include customer support employees, making the figure a good – if not perfect – approximation of Uber’s own gender diversity statistic.

While there’s a gulf between the two in terms of engineering roles, it’s closer among the general workforce – though there’s still no gender parity. Overall, 40 percent of Didi’s 7,000 employees are women, compared to 36 percent at Uber.

Didi president Jean Liu this week pointed out women “hold multiple senior management positions” at the startup. Liu, 39, is a former Goldman Sachs banker who rose to become managing director for Asia. She joined Didi in 2014.

Jean Liu, Didi Chuxing’s president, onstage Tuesday at WSJDLive in Laguna, California. Image credit: screen grab from WSJ video.

“Of course, we need to do better and have much more work to do. But we’ve made some strides in diversifying our workforce,” said Liane Hornsey, Uber’s chief human resources officer, earlier this week. The Silicon Valley company is still reeling from the explosive allegations of rampant harassment of female software engineers, as detailed by former employee Susan J. Fowler.

Uber fares better in Asia than any other region, where its overall workforce is 42.5 percent women.

The Chinese startup this week opened its Didi Women’s Network, a series of leadership schemes designed to “put in place female leadership initiatives with different focuses, including multi-level female leadership and mentorship programs.” It includes selecting “15 outstanding female employees” to take part in “intensive tutoring from senior executives,” said the company.