For multimillion dollar tech firms in Silicon Valley, the workforce is commonly dominated by men. But at the 2015 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), which commenced June 8, Apple slowly took steps to address the industry's diversity problems by having women take the stage to deliver keynote presentations, according to Bloomberg.
Two of the female speakers at Apple's WWDC this year were Jennifer Bailey, who heads Apple Pay and discussed the future of mobile payments, and Susan Prescott, an executive for the News app who introduced one of the company's latest app developments. So far, six other female executives delivered speeches, according to Gizmodo.
Apple's previous events had no female presenters, except for the time model Christy Turlington unveiled Apple Watch. The company received criticisms for this, with some complaining that Apple only uses beautiful models for their products so that it garners attention, according to The Verge.
Apple's CEO, Tim Cook, spoke about having more women actively becoming visible for the company. "I think it's our fault—'our' meaning the whole tech community," said Cook in an interview with Mashable.
The company is also donating and sponsoring initiatives supporting tech organizations centered on women like the National Center for Women & Information Technology and the App Camp For Girls.
"I think, in general, we haven't done enough to reach out and show young women that it's cool to do it and how much fun it can be," added Cook. "It's not an overnight thing. But it's also not an unsolvable issue. It's readily solvable. Because most of the issues have been created by humans, so they can be fixed."
Apple is not the first company to feature women in its keynote presentations. Google did this at the recent I/O developer conference, as well as back in 2011, reported Bloomberg.
