I’m wondering if any of you have run across any independent statistics for what defines a minority in the technology industry?

For example, there’s been a lot of press recently about how many large tech companies have relatively few women. OK – I can wrap my head around that. Given that females are around half the population, it seems reasonable to think they’d be about half the workforce, so if the number is considerably less, that’s obviously a gender minority.

But what are the other minorities in terms of tech industry employment? What defines a minority?

[Also – I know there’s a related but distinct problem of equal treatment, but for this particular query, I mainly need to look at workforce population rather than the more complex problems of pay equality, harassment, and so on, even though those are also hugely important.]

It seems like “minority” could easily be something like, “less than 50-ish percent” when you’re talking about gender, but that’s harder for ethnicity. It’s tough to employ 50% Caucasian, 50% Asian, 50% African-descent, and 50% something else, because that’s… well, I suck at math but it seems like more than 100%, if you take my meaning. So at what level is a particular ethnicity not a minority? Is there some agreed-upon list of what ethnicities there are, so I know when I’m looking at a minority or not? I truly don’t know.

Anyway, I’ve been Binging all morning and I haven’t been able to find anything like a Department of Labor report on actual employment percentages, what constitutes a “minority,” and so on – so I’m hoping you folks can point me to something.

Just drop a comment, or tweet me @concentrateddon. Thanks in advance!