With diversity in mind, Apple and other tech companies of the Silicon Valley are hiring more females and people form underrepresented backgrounds. Following reports of unconcealed lack of women in the workforce of Silicon Valley firms, Apple has set out to rectify the situation by growing its diversity.
This year, the tech giant made sure that it hired more women, Black, Hispanic or Native Americans. Even after having hired more females and people from minority backgrounds, the company’s workforce representing that area increased by just one percent. Apple CEO Tim Cook announced that in the last one year, women hires accounted for 35 percent of the total recruitment figure while 24 percent included Black or Latino people. However Apple and its executives admit that there is more work to do in this area as the firm is still dominated by white males.
Apple’s intentions with regard to this matter are revealed by Cook when he said in a statement “Diversity is critical to innovation, and it is essential to Apple’s future. We aspire to do more than just make our company as diverse as the talent available to hire.”
The latest diversity report of the Cupertino firm shows that in the beginning of this year, it hired 65 percent more females compared to 2014. Tim stated that almost half of the hires this year have been females and people from underrepresented demographics and they are happy with the progress although much more needs to be done.
It has been reported that one of the reasons of the underrepresentation of women in the tech industry is their reluctance to apply for the job in the first place. The job description is one major factor which is holding them back. When Twitter users were asked to respond on this matter, the replies received included usage of words like ‘dominance’ and ‘aggression’ required for the job role which have traditionally represented male characteristics.
Statistics released last month by tech companies clearly revealed that diversity within the firms was minimal. Companies like Google, Yahoo!, LinkedIn and Twitter included a mere 2 percent of Black population in its workforce. Intel on the other hand had 4 percent of such employees. To promote diversity by publicly pushing the issue, Apple has been taking initiatives like the $50 million plan to raise minorities in tech jobs.
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Civil rights activist Rev. Jesse Jackson has praised Apple’s efforts and progress towards achieving diversity by calling it “solid, measurable progress.” This comes after the announcement Cook made about hiring 50 percent more Black employees and 66 percent more Hispanic employees than it did last year. Jackson is asking other companies to provide more detailed hiring statistics and to contract with female- and minority-owned companies. He has even praised Intel and HP to take similar actions in promoting and practicing diversity.
Although women still make up only 31 percent of Apple’s total workforce and 28 percent of the leadership positions, the company plans to diversify even more in the coming months. The steps taken by tech companies to boost diversity in the workforce will soon achieve the goal to bridge the race- and gender-gap completely in the coming years and demolish the concept of glass ceiling completely.
