Will Apple Finally Feature a Woman on Its Biggest Stage Today?
There are still a bunch of open questions for today’s Apple Watch event in California: How long will the watch’s battery last? How much will the most expensive watch cost? When will it go on sale?
The question I’m most interested in: Will Apple’s event feature a woman speaking for once?
As I wrote after Samsung’s Galaxy S6 unveiling –– an event which prominently featured two woman executives –– Apple is on a sort of Dimaggo-like streak of bringing men out to talk about their new products. In October, Apple’s iPad event featured executives Tim Cook, Craig Federighi, and Phil Schiller. A month before, in September, its iPhone 6 event featured executives Tim Cook, Phil Schiller, and Eddy Cue. In June, Apple’s summer event featured executives Tim Cook, Craig Federighi, and Greg Joswiak.
This is a consistent trend: In 2014 a developer named Joe Kikura sifted through 16 hours of video from WWDC, Apple’s annual developers conference, and found that of 59 featured speakers since the iPhone came out in 2007, two were women.
This is not a good ratio of male-female speakers.
There are murmurings from the connected classes that the Apple Watch event might be the one where Apple finally, after years and years of clubby affairs, features one of its woman executives. Angela Ahrendt, the former CEO of Burberry who Apple hired into a specially created Senior Vice President of Retail position in 2013, has yet to speak at one of these mega-hyped press conferences. Given that much thought has likely been poured into how to market and sell these Watches, it would seem natural for Ahrendt to take the stage and make her presence known.
It’s also, to use a Watch pun, about time. It is time for Apple, whose events have been dominated by men for far too long now. And it is time for the technology industry, which has seen its gender inequality issues scrutinized lately in several high-profile and embarrassing news stories, and in corporate self-disclosures about enormous gender gaps in their workforces.
A visualization of gender disparities at tech startups, via Subtraction. Original infographic here.
The mere presence of a woman at Apple events shouldn’t be so rare that there is a question of whether we’ll even see one today. Apple’s events are the most highly-watched and closely-scrutinized technology happenings of the year. Showcasing a woman would set a powerful example for the entrepreneurs that want to build the next Apple, as well as for the budding female engineers that will be live-streaming from home. It might also prove that Apple is as committed to diversity as its press releases claim.
Apple will almost certainly reveal information about battery life, release date, and pricing. Here’s hoping it will also reveal a few of its employees who aren’t named Tim, Phil, or Craig.
