Commerce is global, and so is eBay Inc. Every day, our eBay and PayPal platforms serve tens of millions of merchants and consumers in virtually every country in the world. And our more than 33,000 employees worldwide work hard each and every day to deliver great experiences for our customers.
As a leader in commerce and digital payments, we take diversity seriously. Since eBay was founded in 1995, we have believed in the power of technology to democratize commerce and create more opportunities for all. We believe in the same power of inclusion and opportunity inside our company. Enabling talented people to thrive matters. Diversity matters. It makes us stronger, and makes us better.
So we are pleased today to share our global gender diversity and U.S ethnic diversity workforce data. We are committed to publishing this data annually. We hope such transparency by eBay and other companies in our industry will help foster constructive debate, partnership and progress.
As our data shows, we have made progress in some areas. But we still have much work to do.
While we are committed to fostering all types of diversity, increasing the number of women in leadership roles has been an early focus. About three years ago, eBay Inc. President and CEO John Donahoe launched our Women’s Initiative Network (WIN). The mission of WIN is to attract and engage women to build lasting, successful careers in the company.
Through WIN, we have more than doubled the number of women in leadership roles and increased the share of leadership positions held by women. And we have continued to expand WIN around the world. Supporting our commitment to women, we also maintain partnerships with the Anita Borg Institute and Lean In. And we leverage research insights from the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University, as well as from leading academics. In various leadership forums globally, we provide ongoing diversity and inclusion training, including gender diversity and unconscious bias.
Support for our LGBT workforce also has been a strong commitment. We are honored to have received a perfect score of 100 percent on the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index (CEI) every year since 2009. We actively recruit from the LGBT community and we provide progressive benefits. And we publicly advocate for equal rights for same-sex couples. For example, we worked recently in Utah and Arizona to defeat legislation that limited equal rights for same-sex couples. We also supported changes to the federal H1B visa program to treat same-gender spouses of visa holders in the same manner as heterosexual spouses.
In common with others in our industry, we continue to work hard to recruit skilled technologists from diverse backgrounds. We use career sites including Black Planet, Black Women Connect, African American Careers, National Society of Hispanic MBA’s and several others. We are also expanding our veteran and disability outreach in the U.S. through HirePurpose and the Veteran Empowerment Organization, which are veteran outreach organizations, and GettingHired and Options Unlimited, which help place people with disabilities into career opportunities.
We believe sustained commitment can make a demonstrable difference. And we are far from satisfied. We will continue to strive for progress, and a stronger, better, more diverse eBay.
