Apple finally puts women onstage

Apple Vice President of Worldwide Online Stores, Jennifer Bailey, speaks about Apple Pay during Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference. Photo: AFP.

The big news at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference always revolves around new apps and updated operating systems.

Monday's event marked a completely different turning point for Apple: Women took the stage during a keynote presentation.

Jennifer Bailey, vice president of Apple Pay, appeared before the crowd of software developers and journalists on Monday to discuss progress in mobile payments.

A second woman, Susan Prescott, gave the pitch for Apple's forthcoming News app.

It marks the first time female executives have made an on-stage appearance during an Apple keynote presentation since 2010, when Zynga's Jen Herman gave a demonstration of the game Farmville.

Like its competitors, Apple wants to be seen as working against the image of Silicon Valley as a male-dominated industry.

Susan Prescott, Apple vice president of Product Management and Marketing, speaks about its News app at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. Photo: AP.

Over the weekend, Apple CEO Tim Cook acknowledged that the industry needs to do a better job on gender issues.

The company's much-hyped and highly-scrutinized public events have long been noticeable for the absence of prominent women.

Christy Turlington, a legendary fashion model, was the only woman to appear during the recent Apple Watch presentation.

If you're keeping track of these presentations as a way to measure progress towards gender equality in Silicon Valley, you could easily make the case that Turlington's cameo should actually count against Apple.

Few people are complaining about a lack of beautiful women being used to draw attention to gadgets.

Compare Apple's performance to this year's Google's I/O developers conference, which took place at the end of May.

Arguably the biggest news of the day-Google Now on Tap -was presented by Aparna Chennapragada, the company's director of product management.

Christy Turlington, a legendary fashion model, was the only woman to appear during the recent Apple Watch presentation. Image: Getty.

Chennapragada was one of three women who spoke during the keynote presentation.

Ellie Powers, product manager for Google Play, has presented for three years running.

The last time a Google didn't have a woman on stage during its annual I/O keynote was 2011.

Microsoft also seemed to make a point of having more women on stage at the keynote for its developer conference, Build, held in late April.

Three women took the stage for the keynote, walking through technical subjects like SQL databases and Saas applications.

At the 2014 conference, the only female voice on stage came from Cortana, who sounds like a lady but is really a piece of artificial intelligence technology.

Developers conferences have never been a paragon of gender diversity.

A regular tradition at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference are tweeted photos showing a line for the men's room that extends down the hall next to a completely empty women's bathroom.

When female developers had to wait to use the facilities at I/O this year, some people actually held it up as a triumph.

Of course, counting keynote speakers and measuring bathroom lines isn't a perfect way to measure the current levels of gender inequality in the tech industry.

Google's workforce isn't actually any more diverse than Apple's.

About 30 per cent of each company's employees are women, according to recent diversity reports.

Apple actually employs more women in tech positions than Google (20 per cent versus 18 per cent), and women make up a higher percentage of leadership positions (28 per cent to 22 per cent.)

There are three women on Google's board compared to Apple's two.

Microsoft lags behind both companies, with only 17 per cent of its tech jobs and 18 per cent of its leadership roles held by women.

See the launch video for Apple's new music streaming service, Apple Music, featuring New Zealand DJ Zane Lowe here: