Apple Just Tried to Address Its Gender Problem in the Worst Way Possible

(Via Reuters)

Did female Apple employees work to make the Apple Watch a possibility? 

Yes, obviously. Apple employs many women, including Senior Vice President Angela Ahrendts, who quit her job as CEO of Burberry torevamp Apple’s in-person and online retail experience in anticipation of this new luxurious wearable. By many accounts, Ahrendts has been instrumental in steering Apple’s watch strategy for the past two years. 

The casual viewer, however, would never know that Ahrendts, or any other woman, really, was part of the Apple Watch development process or launch. Because at its event on Monday, the company invited supermodel Christy Turlington on stage to talk about the project instead of any one of the women who were actually involved in its creation.

This wouldn’t be so bad if Apple’s track record with hiring, promoting, and showcasing its female employees were better. Lots of companies employ hot, famous people to sling their products to the masses, even if they have nothing to do with the creation of said product. 

But considering Apple’s storied history of live presentations, the fact that the company opted for a live appearance from Turlington, who took the stage instead of a smart lady executive who actually helped make the watch a reality, is a clear missed opportunity for the company to support a movement that so badly needs the public support of a corporate giant like Apple. 

The numbers

When it comes to hiring a balanced number of men versus women, Apple, like many of its peers in the tech industry, comes up short. Last year, as activists placed public pressure on tech companies to make their workforces more diverse, the company released statistics about the race and gender makeup of its workforce. A mere 30 percent of its 98,000 global employees are women. And the numbers get worse when you look at specific sectors. Only 28 percent of the company’s corporate leadership is female. And, disappointingly, women only make up 20 percent of its core tech sector.

Apple CEO Tim Cook admits that the company needs to do better. “I’m not satisfied with the numbers on this page,” he wrote in a letter that was released alongside the diversity report. “They’re not new to us, and we’ve been working hard for quite some time to improve them. We are making progress, and we’re committed to being as innovative in advancing diversity as we are in developing our products.” 

Since then, Apple has been working to change the makeup of its workforce, and how it’s perceived by women. Apple sent recruiters to a Women in Computing conference in Arizona. It continues to sponsor the National Center for Women and Information Technology. The company even announced it would cover the cost of freezing its female employees’ eggs. But at its public media events, Apple’s efforts have been uncomfortably nonexistent.

As the developer Joe Kukura found after watching 16 hours of past Worldwide Developers Conference event footage, Apple has shown only two live women on stage out of its 59 featured speakers since 2007. Neither were given major roles in the event. And neither were high-level executives. (As I mentioned, Apple doesn’t have many of those in the first place). Journalist Selena Larson confirmed this female scarcity with her own research, noting that “women or minorities have appeared a handful of times in photos while white male executives demonstrate the capabilities of the smartphone’s camera or editing software. They just weren’t on stage themselves.”