Apple may be all about diversity on the surface, but the numbers show that the company hasn’t made strides in becoming more diverse over the last year — its leadership is still overwhelmingly comprised of white men.
Apple has released new data showing that the company’s high-ranking employees are made up of a higher percentage of white men than the rest of the company. Only 20 of Apple’s 107 executives are women, and only 5 of those executives are members of a minority group. Those numbers are pretty much unchanged from a year ago.
One layer down, things get a little better — but not by much. While women made up 27 percent of management, 65 percent of those managers are white, 23 percent Asian, and 11 percent from other minority groups. This data comes from a form called the EEO-1, which companies must file with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Apple, along with a number of other companies, has pledged to boost diversity, and has said in the past that increased diversity isn’t just good for society, but also makes sense from a business perspective. While these numbers aren’t that great, Apple says that the data on them does not reflect how the company breaks down its workforce internally, nor how it measures its diversity.
Apple does seem to be moving in the right direction, even if its changes are small — the company’s new hires were 37 percent women and 27 percent underrepresented minorities. Microsoft, on the other hand, seems to be moving in the wrong direction — the company’s latest reports showed that the number of women at Microsoft has declined for the second year in a row. Microsoft blames layoffs in its phone division.
