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Posted: 2016-01-15T20:32:18Z | Updated: 2016-01-20T22:16:09Z

Apple presents itself as a company that values diversity. Indeed, the tech company is led by Tim Cook, the only openly gay chief executive on the Fortune 100 and a vocal advocate for LGBT rights.

But the facts on the company's inclusion of women and people of color tell a more complicated story.

Earlier this month, Apple's board voted down a shareholder proposal urging the tech giant to move faster to diversify senior management and its board of directors -- "two bodies that presently fail to adequately represent diversity (particularly Hispanic, African-American, Native-American and other people of colour)," reads the proposal from Antonio Avian Maldonado II. Maldonado is the creative director of music company Insignia Entertainment, and holds around 600 shares in Apple.

Apple has exactly one black man and two women on its eight-person board . There is one black woman and two white women on its 18-member executive team.

The board is "a little bit too vanilla," Maldonado told Bloomberg Business last year. "I want to nudge them to move a little bit faster."

Diversity proposals aren't that uncommon , Bloomberg noted. And boards don't like them. Since 2000, not a single one has been approved.

The proposal for Apple is short on specifics; Maldonado wasn't asking Apple to fire any senior folks. In fact, it is not unusual for a large public company to add directors to its board in order to diversify.