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An Apple Manager Complained About Sexism. Apple Put Her on Leave

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Apple's Headquarters, Apple Park, in Cupertino, CA

Photo: Arne Müseler/arne-mueseler.com/CC-by-SA-3.0

Apple’s a large tech company. It seemed strange to me that stories never broke about its extreme and sexist culture. After all, most large companies that accumulate a majority male employee base eventually, without training, drop into sexism. Apple has been struggling to increase its number of female employees for years, with little success. Turns out Apple’s just a bit more secretive than most companies, something product leakers have known for some time.

Ashley Gjøvik, an engineering manager at Apple, raised concerns about sexist behavior she noticed. The complaints included “years of experiences with sexism, a hostile work environment, sexual harassment, unsafe working conditions, and retaliation,” according to Gjøvik. Instead of tackling the problems at Apple, she says the company offered her therapy and medical leave, even “disability accommodations.” She, obviously, pushed back, suggesting what sounds like gaslighting therapy to convince her to be fine with the sexism she witnessed—rather than eliminating it—made no sense.

After tweeting about her problems within Apple, they put her on administrative leave.

It seems Apple’s using the same tactics as Google and others to silence the complaints of women.

Sexism at Apple

Women and men talk differently. Women, for example, use pitch to indicate emphasis. A woman will raise or lower the pitch of her voice more frequently than men, who will speak in a more monotonous voice. Men will use volume to indicate emphasis in some of the situations where women may use a pitch change. This isn’t true of every man and every woman, but, in general, these are common voice pattern differences between these two genders.

So when a woman receives a bad performance review because of the way she talks, specifically because she doesn’t talk like a man, it’s sexism. We call it “tone policing,” and it was built into a review for Gjøvik while at Apple. She had screenshots both of a conversation that brought it up as well as a performance review, stating how she could improve and, once she deepened her inflections, that she had “actively addressed” the employee’s concerns about her voice.

Kavanaugh Hearings and Trauma

Gjøvik asked if Apple CEO Tim Cook would address the troubling concerns revolving around accused rapist and now U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The accusations were so hard to listen to, many women had conversations with each other about them. I spoke to many other survivors of sexual assault during this time. It was a hard time for many of us, who struggled to work after hearing the news. For some, the testimony alone triggered PTSD responses. In others, devastation and empathy. In response, an Apple employee condescendingly texted Gjøvik that Ruth Bader Ginsburg once called him “very decent and very smart.” This, Apple also reportedly ignored.

In fact, according to Gjøvik, her complaints with Apple first started in 2018. Apple closed her case then, saying they found no wrongdoing. She has since provided in total 558 pieces of evidence to support her claims of sexism at Apple, only sharing a few with the public that do not reveal anything about Apple’s confidential processes, products, or features.

Instead of investigating these, or finding those who clearly committed, at the very least, unconscious acts of sexism, Apple offered Gjøvik medical leave and counseling while conducting another investigation. They then put her on administrative leave.

Not Apple’s First Sexism Issue This Year

This isn’t even the first time this year that Apple has been in the news for sexism. Earlier this year, Apple hired former Facebook advertising manager Antonio García Martínez. Martínez had written a book, “Chaos Monkeys,” which turned out to be controversial. Apple employees signed a petition questioning Apple’s reasoning for hiring someone who’s book contained, what they deemed as, racist and sexist remarks, like referring to Bay Area women as “soft and weak, cosseted and naive despite their claims of worldliness, and generally full of shit.” This would have come up during the hiring process, and Apple seemingly allowed it. It’s hard to believe they would have missed something so large.

Apple fired Martínez shortly thereafter.

Unsafe Conditions

Gjøvik also complained about unsafe working conditions, along with complaints of Apple’s sexism. She hasn’t fully clarified outside of pointing out that she was referring to physical safety, OSHA violations. These are very serious accusations that OSHA will likely have to investigate.

Observers have criticized conditions at Apple’s factories and repair centers before, going so far as to refer to Apple’s repair centers as “sweat shops.” Many of the materials inside modern electronics are, at one point, either toxic or produced by releasing toxic fumes. In the production of Samsung semiconductors, for example, workers exposed to chemicals suffered cancers and their children were born with birth defects. The process around creating technology is no joke. Without proper safety procedures, the consequences can be long lasting or even deadly. That’s why it’s especially worrying to hear that Gjøvik’s complain includes “dangerous chemicals.”

Gjøvik also previously criticized Apple’s new plan, requiring employees to return to the offices this fall.

“OK, you want me to put my life on the line to come back to the office, which will also decrease my productivity, and you’re not giving me any logic on why I actually need to do that?”

– Ashley Gjøvik, in a NY Times article

Apple’s return to the office plan has been unpopular. Not only are parts of California suffering large COVID-19 outbreaks, lead by the Delta variant, but many employees simply don’t want to return to the office. In-person work is easier to manage for security purposes, and can increase innovation and collaboration across teams. However, it also involves long commutes, distractions from coworkers, and forced proximity to Apple’s headquarters, which means exceedingly high costs of living. It can also mean more sexual harassment. While Apple was only asking for workers to return on a 3 day per week basis, many workers complained that the company offered them no choice on number of days in the office or times. Some, for medical or productivity reasons, haven’t wanted to return at all. If conditions at the office are unsafe, either because of chemicals or improper COVID-19 restrictions (or lack thereof), then Gjøvik’s complaints are even more dire.

Apple’s Response

“[Apple] apparently made no effort to set boundaries and instead said they were placing me on administrative leave and implied they did not want me on Slack where I had been vocal about my concerns with certain policies at the company. They also implied they didn’t want me to meet one-on-one with other women at the company about their concerns with Apple policies, which I had been doing.”

– Ashley Gjøvik

Apple hasn’t officially responded to any requests for comment. However, the company’s responses to Gjøvik have been less than satisfactory. When an employee comes in with very real proof of sexism at your company, the response should not be to suggest women are the problem. Gjøvik has screen shots to back her story up, proving that colleagues have criticized her for what amounts to “talking like a woman.” It’s that very sexism that hurts women in interviews and performance reviews for promotions. That alone is the reason why we even teach people about microaggressions and preconceived notions that base an idea of what is considered “professional” on an overwhelming white and male model. Instead of dealing with these issues, Apple offered therapy for Gjøvik and told her to take medical leave. That’s completely unacceptable.

 

Apple may not have “cube crawls,” but they certainly are working to keep women from rising through the ranks. Perhaps that’s why women have stagnated at Apple, with few in engineering positions and even fewer in management. Less than a quarter of Apple’s engineers are women. 24%. That’s up from 20% in 2014, a slight but insignificant increase. Women make up only 31% of Apple’s leadership, up from just 28% in 2014. Again, that’s insignificant. Only 6% of Apple’s “tech” talent is Black… the same as 2014. Apple’s progress on diversity has lagged behind anything we should consider acceptable.

Women make up half the population and half of the workforce. Maybe Apple wouldn’t struggle to remove sexist and racist bias in their hiring process if they didn’t potentially foster it internally.

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