AppleToo

Lack of women in leadership

In September 1991, Macworld reported employee criticism of Apple's failure to promote women as often as men on a tool called AppleLink. At the time, the company only had four women in department leadership roles, of which there are about 100.[16][17] In 2014, a developer found only two women in 16 hours of WWDC footage since 2007.[18] The following year, Quartz reported only one woman took the stage at any Apple event between 2013 and 2015, including Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) keynote,[19] which prompted questions about the lack of gender diversity at Apple.[20] MIC reported in 2017 women accounted for only 7% of stage time at the WWDC keynote, nine minutes out of two hours.[21] Apple shareholders demanded Apple add more women and minorities to leadership and Vox reported only 29% of all leadership were women.[22][23] The following September, at the iPhone X announcement, only one woman took the stage to account for six minutes of the two-hour event.[20]

In 2020, the virtual WWDC keynote included rank-and-file employees, which included 11 women and 8 men.[24] On International Women's Day in 2022, a video Apple event promoting Apple M1 featured women developers at the company was criticized by current and former employees. They said it misrepresented the company's gender diversity and response to sexism. Scarlett tweeted that the 2021 wage survey found that less than 10% of Apple's female workforce were in technical roles in software or hardware.[25] Lauren Goode, a female tech reporter, said in a Wired podcast that the change to a virtual event hid the lack of diversity at WWDC. Commenting on the reality behind a joke about there being no lines at the women's restrooms in tech she said, "There's very rarely a line for the women's restroom because there are so few women at this conference."[26]

In September 2022, Computerworld reported just two of Apple's 12 most senior executives were women.[27] Two months later, CEO Tim Cook told the BBC there were not enough women in tech, including at Apple, and there was "no good excuse" for it.[28]

Federal labor complaints

In late 2021, Cher Scarlett filed three charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) against Apple for stifling employees from collecting wage data and discussing their salaries, for fostering a culture of harassment and abuse with unlawful rules, and for the memo sent by Cook to staff.[46][49] Ashley Gjøvik filed two NLRB charges, one about the memo and another that challenged several policies in the employee handbook that she said illegally inhibit staff from exercising their federally-protected rights to talk to the press, discuss wages, and post on social media in a second charge.[50][49] The memo was criticized for conflating product leaks with employee activism around workplace conditions, and for including the line, "people who leak confidential information do not belong here," which some interpreted as threatening.[51][52] In November 2021, Janneke Parrish filed wrongful termination charge with the NLRB in which she alleged the investigation and firing for leaking a recording of the townhall was "based upon false and pretextual reasons" and retaliation for her work with #AppleToo.[37]

On November 19, 2021, Apple posted a memo affirming employees' rights to discuss pay and working conditions.[53] While not an official response to one of the group's requests about a company-wide statement clarifying employee rights,[54] Parrish referred to the memo as a victory for the group,[55] and said it would "help end a systemic culture of silence around our working culture and pay equity".[56] Veena Dubal, a law professor, stated, "This is a win for workers because it shows that Apple knows they would have lost had this been adjudicated",[55] referring to Scarlett's first NLRB charge and the penalty that would have been assessed by the NLRB.[57] Dubal also highlighted how little the enforcement of the NLRA does to deter employers from violating these laws.[55] Scarlett later tweeted that she had made four demands to Apple on September 2, 2021, the day after she filed the NLRB charge, one of which had been for the affirmation Apple had posted.[58]

In December 2021, Forbes reported that the NLRB had rejected the withdrawal request with the non-board settlement asking Apple to make 22 changes to the language in the document, including language suppressing Scarlett from helping other Apple employees organize and file charges against Apple for a period of one year.[59] She also confirmed that the memo posted in November was a part of the settlement she reached, but that Apple had only left it up for the week Apple had given the company off for Thanksgiving,[60] which she said did not uphold the agreement's requirement of the memo being published "in a prominent and visible location". In a statement to The Verge, she said she would have been "interested in [withdrawing the charge without the settlement] to avoid witnesses having to give testimony", but that she and other employees decided to follow through with the charges in the face of potential retaliation because of how the company handled the posting of the memo.[58]

All five charges brought by Scarlett and Gjøvik were found to have merit in January 2023.[46][12] On September 30, 2024, the NLRB charged Apple with forcing employees to sign "illegal" NDAs that "restrained" and "interfered" with their federal rights under labor laws, based on the charges brought by Scarlett and Gjøvik.[61][62] In October 2024, the NLRB charged Apple with illegally firing Scarlett and Parrish for their advocacy. The prosecutor also charged Apple with restricting employee social media and Slack usage and for suppressing discussions of a gender-based wage gap in violation of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (NLRA).[63][64][65]

On September 26, 2025, the NLRB withdrew and dismissed the charges against Apple filed by Parrish, including the allegation that she had been terminated illegally.[66]

Shareholder and securities complaints

The wage transparency survey and #AppleToo event prompted several instances of shareholder activism. A "civil-rights audit," an investigation into the use of NDAs, and a "workers' rights assessment," were proposed and approved by shareholders.[67][68] They were the first shareholder actions approved in ten years.[69] Reporters at Politico said that it was "bigger than Apple" and such actions set the tone for other large companies. Investment firms said that attempts to block such shareholder actions would put brand equity at companies with progressive values at risk.[70]

In response to a no-action request filed by Apple with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) which claimed that it was not Apple's practice to use NDAs in employment contracts that inhibit an employee's ability to speak about working conditions, Cher Scarlett filed a whistleblower tip with the agency and shared a severance agreement that stipulated what she was allowed to say about her departure, which was validated by Business Insider. A group of treasurers then called on the SEC to investigate Apple's use of NDAs.[71][72] The shareholder-prompted audit found that instances existed where NDAs would infringe on an employee's right to speak on unlawful conduct and agreed to remove all concealment clauses from employment contracts retroactively.[73] Laws enacted in California and Washington after the #AppleToo event barred the use of NDAs in employment contracts in relation to harassment, discrimination, and other unlawful activity.[74]

2024 gender discrimination lawsuit

On June 13, 2024, two women filed a lawsuit alleging gender pay bias and sexual harassment on behalf of 12,000 current and former women at Apple in California against the company seeking class status.[75] The suit alleges that Apple circumvents laws prohibiting potential employers from asking about a potential employee's salary history by instead asking for salary expectations, which it states "has had a disparate impact on women," and, separately, that the performance review system is biased against women.[76][77] In its coverage, Ars Technica quoted the lawsuit as alleging, "The longer a woman works at Apple, the larger the gap in compensation she receives compared to similarly situated men."[78] In a contribution to Forbes, a psychologist and professor of gender studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, Kim Elsesser, attributed the link between salary expectations and history to the anchoring effect, a phenomenon that causes people to value their worth on previous pay. Elsesser shared research that indicates women are impacted by additional social factors when they negotiate for higher pay or promotions; instead of being rewarded, women are penalized and evaluated as aggressive or unlikable.[79][80][81]