Apple Diversity Report Highlights Stark Silicon Valley Gender Imbalance

Apple is the latest Silicon Valley firm to produce a breakdown of its staff members in terms of their gender and race - and the results highlight the seemingly endemic sexual divide between tech and non-tech jobs, even in this 'coolest' of employers.

Its the stats show that 70% of all Apple employees worldwide are male, while in terms of leadership roles, that increases to 72%.

In tech roles it's further upped, to 80% per cent male. Even non-tech roles are majority masculine-held, at 65%.

Race and ethnicity figures were also given for the US end of the firm. These show 55% of the workforce as white, 15% Asian, 11% Hispanic, and 7% black.

In leadership positions, the white percentage shoots back up again - to 64%.

Cook: I'm Not Satisfied

CEO Tim Cook noted: "I'm not satisfied with the numbers on this page. They're not new to us, and we've been working hard for quite some time to improve them. We are making progress, and we're committed to being as innovative in advancing diversity as we are in developing our products."

So how does Apple compare to the other tech giants who have been recently spilling the beans on their workforce diversity? It's quite a similar story, actually, with both Twitter and Google employees being 70 per cent male, exactly the same as Apple, and Facebook being 69% men.

eBay is ahead of the game when it comes to bridging the tech gender divide, though, with 58% of staff male.

Cook also noted that Apple sponsors the Human Rights Campaign, the National Centre for Women & Information Technology, and America's biggest LGBT rights group, and he stated: "The work we do with these groups is meaningful and inspiring.

"We know we can do more, and we will."