‘No good excuse’ for lack of women in tech: Apple CEO Tim Cook

Cook acknowledged the gender imbalance in the workforce at his own company. According to statistics shared by Exploding Topics, women make up only 27% of the total workforce in tech companies. From 2020 to 2021, the total number of women in technology-related positions decreased by 2.1%. According to Statista, Google will have 33.7 percent of its female employees in 2021. In 2021, the figure is 34.8%, according to Apple. Its own diversity report.

Tim Cook said in the interview that Apple is trying to make things better. The Cupertino-based company recently launched its Founder Development Program in the UK for female founders and app creators. The company is prioritizing women in the program, he said.

“I think the very nature of technology and its impact on humanity depends on the participation of women,” Cook said. “Technology is a great thing, it can do a lot of things, but unless you have a different perspective on it, you’re not going to end up with a great solution,” he added.

One of the challenges holding back women’s participation in the tech industry is the lack of girls who choose to study science, technology, engineering and math subjects in school. “Businesses can’t escape saying ‘there aren’t enough women studying computer science — so I can’t hire enough people,'” Cook said. “We have to fundamentally change the number of people studying computer science and programming.”

Cook believes that everyone should be required to take some kind of coding course in order to have a “working knowledge” of how coding works and how applications are created. Apple created its own programming language, Swift, a powerful and intuitive programming language for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS.