WWDC Bathroom Lines Summarizes Tech's Gender Problem

WWDC Bathroom Lines Summarizes Tech's Gender Problem
SAN FRANCISCO, CA - JUNE 08: Apple CEO Tim Cook (R) greets Johnny Iovine during the keynote address during Apple WWDC on June 8, 2015 in San Francisco, California. Apple's annual developers conference runs through June 12. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
SAN FRANCISCO, CA - JUNE 08: Apple CEO Tim Cook (R) greets Johnny Iovine during the keynote address during Apple WWDC on June 8, 2015 in San Francisco, California. Apple's annual developers conference runs through June 12. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

If you need a visual to help explain the tech industry's gender problem, look no further than the bathroom line at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference.

The annual WWDC introduces Apple's newest products and teaches programmers how to develop applications for them, but the event's absurdly long men's bathroom line and nearly non-existent women's queue caught some attendees' attention as a perfect demonstration of how men take up so much space in the industry.

Unfortunately, attendees observed the same line disparities at WWDC both last year and the year before.

Apple and Google's global workforces are still 70 percent male, and fewer than 10 percent of all computer programmers are female.

The cliched defense for the industry holds that women aren't interested in or qualified for tech positions. But a look back on some of tech's most misogynistic moments makes it clear that businesses have done a good job of telling women they aren't welcome.

There's Hot Tech Today, a website that combines tech news with photos of naked women; the "Hackers and Hookers" party hosted by a tech incubator; and Titstare, a joke app "where you take photos of yourself staring at tits" presented on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2013. The list goes on and on.

Another bathroom line offers a glimmer of hope. Last month, women attendees at Google’s I/O conference tweeted that they were ecstatic to actually be waiting for the bathroom for the first time.

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