After the breakout of the COVID-19 pandemic, Apple CEO Tim Cook is on his first visit to England. After launching the founders’ development program for female founders and app creators in the UK, Cook toured Apple’s all-news campus in London’s Battersea Power Station and announced that it will open in early 2023.
Cook also sat down with Zoe Kleinman from BBC to discuss women’s representation in the tech industry and Augmented Reality (AR).
For some time rumor mills have reported that Apple is working on a new, Augment Reality and Virtual Reality, mixed reality headset primarily for video and game streaming. Without giving any specifics, Cook said that AR is a profound technology and the company is investing “a tonne in that space.”
Moving on to workplace diversity, he said that technology “will not achieve nearly what it could achieve” without a more diverse workforce.
Tim Cook strongly believes there are “no good excuses” for the lack of women in the tech industry
According to the company’s 2021 diversity report, 35% of its staff are women in the United States. However, the sector needs more female representation because “the essence of technology and its effect on humanity depends upon women being at the table.” said Cook.
The root cause of the lack of women in the tech industry is that few girls choose to pursue science, engineering, math, and tech at school. But for Cook that is only an excuse.
He said schools need to introduce coding courses to teach children coding so they have a “working knowledge” of how to code and create apps like Apple’s Swift program. For him, there are “no good excuses” for the lack of women in the tech industry.
“Businesses can’t cop out and say ‘there’s not enough women taking computer science – therefore I can’t hire enough. We have to fundamentally change the number of people that are taking computer science and programming.” said Cook.
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