Apple has defended criticism of the lack of diversity during its iPhone 7 launch, by noting that there was a “gay man, two African-Americans and a Canadian” on stage during the event.
has come under fire for the lack of women presenters in its iPhone 7 launch event.
Last week, Melanie Ehrenkranz, tech reporter for Mic, published an article citing the lack of diversity among Apple’s presenters during Wednesday’s keynote — most notably, women. The article, titled “Apple is committed to diversity, but fails on the biggest stage in tech,” notes that women spoke for approximately eight minutes during the keynote, compared to the 99 minutes men spoke.
Ehrenkranz pointed out that while three women appeared onstage during the iPhone event, only one of them actually worked for Apple. The other two presenters were from app and gaming companies brought in to demo apps tailored to product capabilities.
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According to the article, Apple failed to return repeated requests for comment.
However, in a follow-up article published Monday, Ehrenkranz published comments from an Apple spokesperson who called the article “unnecessarily harsh.”
“There was a lot of diversity on that stage that you don’t recognize,” read an email from the unidentified Apple spokesperson.
“Unrecognized by you was the fact that we had a gay man, two African-Americans (Instagram and Nike), a Canadian and a British woman, Hannah Catmur.”
That’s right — the spokesperson pointed out that having a Canadian onstage was diverse.
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As for the other diverse parties, the spokesperson was likely referring to Apple CEO Tim Cook, who is openly gay, along with Nike brand president Trevor Ed wards and Instagram head of design Ian Spalter, who are both African-American.
However, the spokesperson failed to address that two of the women who appeared on stage, along with both African-American men, did not work for Apple.
Ehrenkranz noted that the Apple spokesperson started the email by asking that it be “off the record.” However, the reporter argued that Mic did not agree to that condition prior to the statement being delivered, which is why they decided to publish the email.
“Apple’s PR team should be advised that off-the-record statements are ‘prearranged agreements’ whose conditions are decided on beforehand — a longstanding rule of ethical journalism,” reads the article.
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This isn’t the first time Apple has come under fire for its diversity, both onstage and off. Like other major tech companies, Apple has been under public pressure to increase the number of women and minorities in a workforce that is overwhelmingly male and white or Asian.
Apple, along with many other tech companies, releases an annual “Diversity Report” that breaks down employee data by things like race and gender. In 2015, Apple said it more than doubled the number of women, blacks and Hispanics hired over that year, although that barely moved the needle in terms of improving the diversity of its total workforce.
At the time, Cook noted that “A lot more work” needs to be done when it comes to diversifying the company’s workforce.