Apple today released its traditional Diversity Report annual, dedicated to reporting the progress (or not) of the company in its efforts to build a team that represents the differences of the world and helps in the crucial task of empowering minorities. This is the first document after the appointment of Denise Young Smith as the company’s first vice president of inclusion and diversity, and also the first after the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States.
The overview of the situation shows that Apple, although it is hiring more significant numbers of black, Asian or Latino people, is not seeing a general change in the internal scenario of representativeness. At least, the presence of women in senior positions has risen in the past 12 months, something to be celebrated.
Speaking of numbers, Apple’s workforce worldwide is 68% men and 32% women, rates unchanged from last year; in the United States, 51% of workers say they are white, while 9% say they are black and 13% say they are Latino. Asians make up about 27% of Ma’s vacancies in their country of origin. It may not be the ideal situation, but at least a picture more diverse than that of several of its main competitors, such as Facebook, Microsoft and Google as Apple itself highlights in the report.
Over the past year, 27% of Apple’s hires were from people participating in minority / underrepresented groups; considering only the contracts related to technology vacancies, this rate rises to 50%.
Despite this, the company’s leadership positions are still dominated by white men: 71% of the seats are occupied by this group. Only 3% of Apple’s high summit in the US is black, while 7% is considered Latino as is well known, the highest positions are those that face the greatest difficulties in presenting a broader diversity rate.
Apple also made available an institutional video talking about its actions to expand diversity within the company and note the presence of the soundtrack of ?A Chegada? (the best film of last year, according to the opinion of this one who writes you), work which deals precisely with cooperation between peoples as one of its main points:
At Apple, ?open? is not just a word. our culture. A culture that embraces religions, disabilities, races, ages, ideologies, personalities and differences. Because humanity in the singular. plural.
In the end, as I always make a point of repeating in texts on the topic, the issue here does not necessarily force the hiring of people from minority groups. No: the question is to bring to light the idea, for so many centuries rejected, that these people are as competent and capable of holding all kinds of positions, from the most basic to the highest leaders, as those who historically dominated all these positions.
In this sense, Apple, however far from being perfect, does an important service in favor of the dissemination of this ideal of equality. Of course, of course: motivation can basically be the marketing, since the world (fortunately!) breathes airs of diversity and companies that do not embark on this wave will break the face. Still, it is still a praiseworthy attitude from Ma.
