Uber’s recent mishaps have shined an uncomfortable but very necessary light on the male-dominated “bro-grammer” culture at many Silicon Valley tech firms.

Now in full-on damage control mode, the ride hailing service has opted for transparency, releasing diversity reports that reveal a workforce composition basically on par with its Silicon Valley brethren.

As usual, however, the real takeaways reside a few layers below the headlines—and they point to issues that extend well beyond Uber or Silicon Valley.

Uber’s 36% ratio of female employees company-wide compares favorably to Google’s 31%. Isolating tech jobs, however, the share of women drops to 15%—lower than the high-teen percentages found at other Silicon Valley bellwethers.

Even those troubling figures are likely generous. There’s no set definition of a “tech job,” and I suspect these firms stretch the criteria as wide as they can. (It’s worth noting the stats exclude drivers, which Uber emphatically categorizes as independent contractors.)

 

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