Apple says hired 65 per cent more women in the past year

Recent reports spurred a national debate about the lack of diversity at Silicon Valley's tech companies

Apple Inc said it had hired over 11,000 women globally in the past year - 65 per cent more than the previous year - to boost employee diversity.

"In the first 6 months of this year, nearly 50 per cent of the people we've hired in the United States are women, Black, Hispanic, or Native American," Chief Executive Tim Cook said in a message on the company's website.

Cook maintained there was "a lot" more work to be done.

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Apple had 92,600 full-time employees as of September 2014.

Diversity reports in the recent past have spurred a national debate about the lack of diversity at Silicon Valley's tech companies and how to improve gender and race ratios.

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Google Inc said in June that 21 per cent of tech hires last year were women, boosting overall number of women in technical roles by 1 per cent, as part of efforts to increase diversity.