If the powers that he wanted him to stay, then this would have been an Official Apology with The Most Sincere Words, a Commitment to Do Better, and then business as usual. IMO, what he said was immaterial and is distracting. I don’t believe he was fired for saying this, even if he’s a public leader that is always representing Apple.
He's far more low profile than Cue or Federighi, and completely unknown among the general public, which backs up your "wanted him gone" theory. If they really did fire him purely for this, then I'm speechless; it never went viral, and it was clearly a joke.
Companies overall take social media far too seriously. The amount of women who would have been turned off working for Apple because of this joke is likely many orders of magnitude lower than the amount of people who refuse to work for Apple because of their strict social media and academic research policies (especially AI researchers).
For context, his line is a direct quote from the 1981 film Arthur; quite literally and obviously a joke; and most of the comments on social media seem to find this hiring puzzling.
When has Apple ever done that?
I am speechless they fired a man they been trying to retain at any cost.
I attribute Apple's sound manufacturing operation, and insane profitability to him as much as to Cook.
That's what happens when you get companies more interested in politics and values vs. just putting out the best products they can. You start to eat your own.
Pretty sure Apple will manage.