The people of Twitter are reminding Tim Cook that when it comes to equity in the workplace, actions speak louder than words.
Apple held a Spring product event Tuesday, which also happened to be International Women’s Day (IWD). Apple CEO Tim Cook marked the occasion with a tweet honoring “women who are charting the course for a more equitable future,” while Apple also featured all female developers in a promotional video for its new M1 Ultra processor.
Some applauded that visibility for female engineers, especially since it was not conspicuously showcased as a PR stunt the company was doing because of IWD. Instead, it was simply that all the developers were women.
But people who identified themselves as former and current employees, as well as others on Twitter, pointed out a problem: Apple’s own treatment of its female employees, and alleged lack of responsiveness when it comes to sexism in the workplace.
Cher Scarlett, a leader of the #AppleToo movement who ended up leaving Apple amid online harassment and alleged retaliation after she collected a survey of the positions, demographics, and salaries of Apple employees, tweeted “Video representation is great, but it’s not enough.”
Allies in the workplace equity fight also called out Apple. Timnit Gebru, the AI ethicist who ended up getting fired by Google for challenging corporate requests she found to be unethical, tweeted about the “audacity” of Apple to pat themselves on the back for International Women’s Day while allegedly mistreating women in the workplace.
“Solidarity with the women who’ll be dealing with a day of incessant gaslighting today,” Gebru wrote in a quote tweet of Tim Cook’s IWD post.
Others showed support for #AppleToo organizers, including Scarlett, who were allegedly disciplined and retaliated against for workplace activism meant to make Apple more equitable.
There are currently labor movements happening at multiple levels of Apple, from engineers to Apple Store employees to factory workers abroad. If Apple wants to truly “celebrate women,” perhaps it should take their appeals to reform an allegedly sexist workplace seriously.
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