A new report claims that Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has a “sexist” and “toxic” environment for female employees at its headquarters.
The report, which comes from Mic, includes alleged emails from female employees of Apple. The emails include several alleged cases of sexual harassment, as well as some toxic comments toward certain male members of the workforce.
One incident had a male employee joking that an office intruder was coming to rape everyone. A woman present for the joke found it inappropriate. The Apple employee apologized for it and the woman took time off from work to deal with the “stress” caused by the rape joke.
Another incident from the emails had a female Apple employee that was upset over the tone of a conversation with male employees. The male members of the team were discussing their wives and significant others in a negative tone and claimed they were nagging them. The woman was offended by this. She was also told to smile at a group of managers, which she claims counts as “subtle sexism,” reports Mic.
Other complaints in the emails allege that Apple didn’t hire certain women because of their gender. There were also complaints from women who were on teams filled with men. A complaint concerning a male worker claimed that others said he was on his “man period” due to his emotional state.
Melanie Ehrenkranz, the Mic writer behind the recent report, also called Apple out last week for a lack of diversity during its iPhone 7 announcement. A spokesperson for the company responded to her by noting it had “a gay man, two African-Americans, a Canadian and a British woman,” on the stage during the event.
