Apple CEO criticises the poor DE&I standards of tech sector

Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, has publicly criticised the tech sector at large, for its lack of diverse representation. 

In an interview with the BBC, Cook said there's "no good excuse" for the underrepresentation of women in the tech industry. 

The criticisms of Apple’s Tim Cook, and the low DE&I standards of the tech and telecoms sectors

Figures from Deloitte Global estimate that the world’s leading technology firms will achieve an average of 33% overall female representation in their workforce this year. But, just 25% of those women will occupy technical roles.

According to Cook, there are still "not enough women at the table" within the largest global tech companies. 

He said that, unless we improve the diversity of our workforce, technology "will not achieve nearly what it could achieve/"

"I think the essence of technology and its effect on humanity depends upon women being at the table," Cook added.

DE&I within Apple - what is the telecoms giant doing to address the problem?

But, Apple is far from exempt from this criticism. In fact, in 2021, just 35% of its global workforce were female.

As part of its attempts to address the issue, Apple recently launched its founders' development programme. This is designed to support the UK’s female tech innovators - particularly founders and app creators.

The bottleneck of industry diversity can be traced back to our education systems, during which very few girls opt for STEM subjects. 

So, in order to address tech’s DE&I issue at the root of the problem, Cook is advocating for coding courses to be made a requirement for all students to complete before they finish school. 

In a similar vein, Apple also recently created its own programming language, called Swift.