Diversity at Apple
How did the tech giant rank?
For International Women’s Day I set out to evaluate the representation of women and other minorities on companies’ websites. Since I started studying engineering I have received many latent messages of “you don’t belong”, so I was interested in the sorts of messages companies send once you reach the real world. And because a company’s website is one of their most outward facing representations, I thought it would be a good place to start. One of the first websites I looked at was Apple. I thought there would be a Bechdel test for UX I could use, but I quickly realized no measures exist to quantify diversity on websites. So I made up my own. I call it the Krieger test. Here’s how it goes.
Important Definitions
Minority: My definition of minority includes women, non-white people, and individuals with disabilities.
The Measures
- Presence and ease of finding minorities: are there multiple minorities or is the site just using the same token minority in multiple photos? How many clicks does it take to come across someone who is not a white able male? Does it require scrolling?
- Minorities involved in teams with non-minorities: are they shown working with others or are they confined to their own teams? Are they on the main pages or just the diversity and inclusion page (looking at you, Amazon)?
- Minorities in non-stereotypical roles: are the women all doing artsy tasks while holding babies? Are the Asians all solving math problems on white boards? Is the corporate board all white?
- Minorities in positions of power: are they the ones giving orders or taking them?
- Overall feelings: was I left feeling saddened by the state of diversity in tech or do I feel hopeful and want to high five the CEO?
The Calculations
Each of the measures is scored on a 10 point scale. From there a website’s raw diversity score is calculated by adding up all of its sub-scores and dividing by 50. Then a curve is added based on how well it did compared to other websites to get its diversity letter grade.
Now here’s how Apple Scored
Presence of and Ease of Finding Minorities Score: 8/10
Every webpage had one or more women and multiple ethnic minorities! To put this in perspective there are parts of IBM’s website that are whiter than Baymax, so next to that anything looks amazing. But seriously, in terms of racial and ethnic representation Apple knocked it out of the park. They tended to follow a 50 percent rule for ethnicity. This means 50% of the people did not appear to be of European descent. The genius bar people, jobs at Apple, corporate opportunities, and Mac in Business pages all were exactly 50% non-white. Other pages had even more ethnic minorities. 50% seemed to be a minimum Apple designers gave themselves to work with. Good job.
I only wish they held themselves to such high standards when it came to gender. The jobs landing page has 3 women out of all 10 people. This almost exactly mirrors Apple’s actual gender ratio (31:69). But websites have the power to express the reality they hope to achieve, rather than the one we live in today. Apple should be gunning for a 50/50 gender split on their website.
Right now no tech website features a person with a visible disability outside of their accessibility pages. But Apple makes some of the best touch sensitive accessible devices out there, so they are really missing out. Think how great it would be to see someone with a motor impairment on the iPad page. A lot of my friends with motor and learning disabilities use iPads in class and therapy, and it would be so cool for them to see someone like them mainstream. Also Apple’s accessibility page is almost entirely white. Disability, race, and gender are not mutually exclusive, so why do the webpages only feature one at a time?
I would not say anyone stood out particularly as being a token minority, but I noticed Apple kept using this photo a lot in the “for business” parts of the website. Considering how many other pictures of minorities they had, it really felt unnecessary.
Apple’s 50% ethnicity rule puts it a bit ahead of other tech companies, but the number and placement of women and people with disabilities are nothing out of the ordinary. Apple gets a solid 8/10.
Minorities on Teams with Non-Minorities Score: 9/10
Apple was fairly great here. Something you often see on tech websites is the cooties phenomenon, where most teams have 0–1 girls and then there are girl only teams. Apple featured teams with a fairly even or girl-heavy gender ratios.
The only reason Apple does not get a 10 here was because they did have a couple of cootie teams, particularly in the “(insert product name) for business” sections of their site.
Nearly perfect, Apple gets a 9/10.
Minorities in Non-Stereotypical Roles Score: 7/10
There were a couple instances of women coding and designing Apple products, but most of the time they were being told how to work an iPad (see Minorities in Positions of Power). One part that really stood out to me was how many women are featured on the education pages while men took over the business pages. That’s not the innovative Apple we know and love. Even on the corporate section of the jobs website only 5 of the 14 people were female. Ethnic minorities fared better, making up 50% of the corporate page. Like every other tech website I looked at, there were no employees with visible disabilities.
With nothing especially bad or good, Apple scored 7/10 here.
Minorities in Positions of Power Score: 3/10
In the hierarchy of Apple people to respect, you have the execs at the top, then the engineers and business people, then genius bar employees, and then the buyers at the bottom. Because Apple’s website predominately features retail, most of this section will focus on the genius bar.
Most of the genius bar photos I looked at were the “get the most out of your (insert product name here)” photos at the bottom of the product pages, and there was one more photo on the genius bar page. Later I found a few more on the retail subsection of the jobs site, but those are too hard to find as a user so I did not count those.
Now Apple actually had a fair amount of ethnic diversity here (4 out 8 people were not white), but fell incredibly short in terms of gender. Only 2 of the geniuses were women. But worse: all of the 6 men were showing women how to use their devices. This sends a subliminal message to women that they aren’t good enough with technology to operate Apple devices, which we all know is not the case. This genius bar photo actually reminded me of another famous computer photo.
Does it surprise us that little girls are told they can’t operate computers when older girls are told the same thing?
Now don’t get me wrong, there were a couple women in charge on Apple’s main site. One was a genuis bar employee, and the other could be found in the (Customer) Support page. Interestingly enough, they were all helping black men.
I looked really hard, but I could not find a single photo of a white male being told what to do on any of the main pages. It took me an additional 6 visits and an in-depth combing of the jobs website before I finally found one: http://www.apple.com/jobs/us/retail.html That’s right, Apple has a photo where a white man is not in charge. One photo. Buried 3 subdirectories deep. This was also the only photo where a man is not assisting a woman.
I also checked out the corporate part of Apple’s jobs website. It was clear they were definitely trying to show diverse corporate employees. They had quotes by an Asian woman, an African American man, a LBGT woman, a white man, and an elderly white man (not pictured here). I could not find an elderly woman though. You’ll see a lot of Macs at Apple but nary a Granny Smith. But to the point, all of the featured people may be great at what they do, but the only one with a fancy title was the white guy: Doug Beck, VP of North America and Northeast Asia.
In Apple’s defense, he is part of a protected class. In fine print it says that he “is a U.S. Navy Reserve Officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan”. And I in no way mean to discount what he has done for the nation, but Apple couldn’t you have featured Angela Ahrendts or Lisa Jackson, or Denise Young Smith? And I am sure Doug Beck is a great ally, but I rather see an actual minority in power.
Because I could only find 6 powerful women on the entire Apple website and most of the women in the pictures were being told what to do, I had no choice but to rate Apple with a lowly: 3/10.
Overall Feelings Score: 8/10
In terms of ethnic diversity, Apple represented itself very well. Its website is actually more ethnically diverse than its employee pool. It also featured veterans and diversity of age. But it greatly underperformed in terms gender representation, and the lack of ethnic diversity in the accessibility pages was disappointing.
But there is a glimmer of hope: the Apple students page. It has 13 people. 7 are girls. Of webpages with 4 or more people for any tech website I looked at, this is one of the highest ratios ever.
You know that phrase, our children are our future? For Apple’s sake I hope that’s the case.
Results
The total score was 35/50. That’s 70%. But relative to many of the other sites I looked at, they weren’t too bad, so I am willing to give them a B/ low B+. I’ll admit a nearly 20% curve is ridiculous. But otherwise almost all tech companies I have looked at would have had grades in the C/D range. Another drawback inherent to my test was that you cannot look at someone and know their ethnicity, you can just see their race. I used the terms usely when performing the evaluation. What really tanked Apple’s score was the minorities in positions in power section of the test, which is odd considering Apple’s leadership is relatively high for a tech company at 28% female.
A Message to the Company
Apple, you are an amazing company, you have one of the highest female to male gender ratio in technical roles, and you funded my school’s trip to Grace Hopper (thank you by the way). Your website just does not reflect that. So please, if you truly believe “diversity is critical to innovation and it is essential to Apple’s future” change it. My little sisters and I won’t grow up to be leaders at Apple if we don’t see women like us that have done it.
