Many in Silicon Valley look to Google as a role model, but while it may be performing well in the marketplace, it’s far from perfect. Like the majority of large companies in the technology sector, the search giant is guilty of allowing workplace inequality, but whereas others have historically been reluctant to share internal statistics, it has elected to come clean about the issue in a move some observers hail as a step in the right direction.

Heeding a request by the Rev. Jesse Jackson to make the diversity of its workforce known to the public, the company on Wednesday released data that provides a rare glimpse into the human side of business at one of the world’s largest tech firms.  It’s not a pretty sight.

Women today account for 30 percent of Google’s more than 45,000 employees worldwide, according to a newly published company graph, which is 10 percent higher than overall female representation in the industry but 17 percent less than the U.S. average. That ratio plummets at the management level and in the company’s R&D organization. While women represent 48 percent of Google’s non-technical employees, they only make up 20 percent of its leadership and a mere 17 percent of the engineers.

The subject of improving female participation in the tech industry has been much discussed and debated in recent years. In an interview on SiliconANGLE’s theCUBE at EMC World earlier this month, Nina Tandon, the co-founder and CEO of pioneering skeletal reconstruction startup EpiBone, argued that education is the key. She detailed how the the wide availability of open classes is helping to democratize knowledge once only accessible in the academia and pointed at the positive impact of startups like Debra Sterling’s GoldieBlox, which makes engineering toys specifically designed for girls.

Others point at pop culture as a potential means of getting more women interested in tech. Former New York Times columnist Catherine Rampell noted in a piece last year that popular television shows like Bones have helped raise awareness about fields that have historically eluded the public’s eye. Meanwhile, Springpad  CEO Jacqueline Hampton and Penny Herscher, who heads analytics specialist FirstRain, point out that female prowess in various areas of communication and business can help women break into traditionally male-dominated industries such as finance.