Why a Multi-Billion Dollar Company is being accused of Gender Discrimination 

Facebook is the centre of attention once again, but the headlines were not positive. The website was being accused for gender discrimination within its targeted ads, specifically the job offers displayed on their page. There were examples of jobs like mechanic, roofer and security engineer that were only targeted at men a specific age and from a specific area. This really shocked and disappointed people, including myself, I thought we were so much more far ahead than this. Today we know that your gender says nothing about how fit you are to do a certain job and discrimination on social media is fought by the sites themselves instead of supported like this, Facebook even said that this goes against their own guidelines.

So why is this still a topic? Other social media websites manage their targeted advertisement a lot smarter and completely unbiased when it comes to gender. LinkedIn for example, a job finding and networking webpage, bases their job offers on the interests, skills, languages of their members and their previous experience. All the offers are completely neutral in their description of who they are looking for, might it be IT-Manager or Make-up Artist, which is absolutely needed nowadays, where everybody can be whatever they want to be, never mind gender stereotypes.

Instagram uses targeted ads just like Facebook does but again, they are based on the interests of their users, who do they follow, and what kind of pictures they like. They will show similar profiles or ads to that on the users feed. Not jewellery and shampoo because it’s a woman or cars and the profile of a football player because the member is male. It’s so easy and so much more effective. The question that the employers of those Facebook ads were asked all week arises even more: Why? No one should be excluded from a job offer just because they are male or female, we are all so much more than that and everybody deserve a chance to prove that.

The next hurdle maybe should not be just giving opportunities to people based on their looks. I just recently found out that in the UK, you are not allowed to send a picture with your job application. How amazing is that? Definitely an idea I will carry with me to Germany that I think should be adapted by more countries. In the end we are all so much more than our gender, our looks, our clothes, our body and no one should ever be excluded from something because of any of this.

(The examples in the pictures show two job ads from Facebook that display typical gender stereotypes that are really not relevant anymore)