Facebook is letting job advertisers target only one gender - Sensationalist Headlines

https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-is-letting-job-advertisers-target-only-men Hundreds of thousands of Americans drive for Uber. And the company is looking for many more. It runs ads on Facebook that say, for example: “Driving toward something? Make extra money when it works for you and get there faster.” Another touts: “Earn $1,100 in Nashville for your first 200 Trips. Limited time guarantee! Terms apply.” There’s just one catch: Many of those ads are not visible to women. A ProPublica review of Facebook ads found that many purchased by Drive with Uber, the company’s recruiting arm, targeted only men in more than a dozen cities across the U.S. Our survey of 91 Uber ads found just one targeting only women; three did not target a specific sex. They were all gathered as a part of our Facebook Political Ad Collector project, in which readers sign up to send us the ads they see in their News Feeds. The review found Uber to be among 15 employers in the past year who have advertised jobs on Facebook exclusively to one sex. Many of the ads seem to target in accordance with stereotypes. The Pennsylvania State Police, for example, boosted a post targeted to men with text saying: “Pennsylvania State Troopers earn a starting salary of $59,567 per year. Apply now.” A Michigan-based truck company took out ads targeting not just men, but men interested in college football. And a community health center in Idaho sought nurses and certified medical assistants — and limited its audience to women. The Supreme Court ruled in 1973 that it is illegal for an employer to take out job ads in newspapers with parameters such as: “Help wanted — men.” “The ads themselves are illegal,” Galen Sherwin, an ACLU lawyer, said. “It’s been established for five decades.” The ACLU, the Communications Workers of America and the firm Outten & Golden filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Tuesday about Facebook’s practices. The filing, which is the first step before filing a lawsuit, names 10 employers who had advertised jobs only to men. The complaint argues that Facebook itself has broken the law by publishing the ads. The company has previously said that giving advertisers the ability to target employment ads by sex and age does not facilitate discrimination. In response to other suits, Facebook has argued that it is not liable for the content its users — in this case, advertisers — post on its platform. That level of targeting also gives advertisers the power to discriminate in ways that may violate the law. ProPublica reported in 2016 that Facebook allows advertisers to exclude users by race. And last year we detailed how job ads on Facebook can exclude older workers. Since our reporting, Facebook has removed the ability for advertisers to exclude certain categories of people by race, religion and national origin. Facebook has not made similar changes for age and sex. In some instances, companies appear to be targeting job ads by sex in order to diversify their workforce or address disparities. ProPublica’s database, for instance, found ads by T-Mobile and Boeing promoting engineering careers to women. Both companies declined to comment. Facebook has taken some steps to try to address the problem of advertiser confusion through “self-certification.” For more than a year, it has required anyone running ads for jobs to check a box saying their ads stay within all legal boundaries. The company has recently said that it will show a pop-up message to all advertisers asking them to agree to obey the law. Note that their database only has about 70,000 ads at the moment

There's two reasons this is noteworthy in my opinion. This may be illegal, which I didn't know about All Facebook does is make advertisers agree to a message that they won't break the law

Imagine you saw an advertisement for a decent job that you want, have the qualifications for and then saw "ONLY [not your gender] CAN APPLY". That wouldn't be cool, that's active discrimination. Pretty sure that's not legal to actively do. This is pretty much exactly the same, except rather than say who can apply to which everyone can see (thus showing sexism outwardly), this hides it by letting only those applicable see.

"Men only" and only men being advertised too are different things. Its pretty dodgy but its not illegal under that SC determination. As far as I know, women can still apply to uber.

legal =/= always morally right yeah, on the one hand the parties being discriminated against are aware that things are being deliberately held back from them on the basis of their gender, whereas on the other hand, they aren't aware of said discrimination, and therefore the discrimination can't be combated effectively. basically the same thing, only one is more underhanded and shittier.

Point oit where I said this was morally justifiable lol. Hey bud remember this is facebook. Facebook is not the sole place for classfield or employment ads to exist, nor is it even the only social media program for employment ads to run on. Women are not being excluded from this advertising all together, only on facebook. Calling this discrimination is silly. Again, "men only" and "only men cam see this" are 2 different things. Both shitty but only one is actually discriminatory.

This is advertisement, not a stipulation of the actual job position. If that's discrimination, then I'm being discriminated against every time my fiancee receives advertising in the mail for salons and cooking services, while I receive ads for Harbor Freight and mortgage insurance. And if that's the case, then it's so mild a form of 'discrimination' that you're cheapening the word. Facebook isn't remotely close to a primary source where people go to look for jobs. This isn't denying one gender from applying to a job, it's just selective advertising- and while it's stupid, it's not anything like denying a job to a protected class.

One could argue that this kind of selective advertising regarding job positions contributes to maintaining gender heterogeneity in the job market. Since men will be shown offers for typically male jobs and women shown offers for typically female jobs, and the latter being generally less well-paid, this helps fostering the gender income gap. Someone has a higher probability of securing a high-paid job if they're shown offers for such jobs. It's not as simple as saying "but others can still apply though". When looking for work, information and network play an important role.

I've seen enough of your posts at this point that I just can't but help wonder why you have to have such undeveloped opinions on things. It would certainly help if you changed your name too. We all grew out of edgy jokes 10 years ago.

I mean, no shit? It's not like they're not allowing only one gender to sign up, they just don't want to blow half their "underwater welder job wanted" budget on a demographic that statistically will never click on it.

Women know how to drive too. Uber driving is not like welding jobs where 95% of those with the required qualifications are men. Besides, selective job advertising is a pretty gray area ethically in general.

considering the fact that employment advertisement will only further transition online its critically important that it is established that companies cannot target demographics with job postings as that is effectively the same as saying "x need not apply." since X demographic never is shown the job to begin with. if the courts don't understand this then our lawmakers need to as job searching has moved online for better and for worse and its the wild west still.

(Meant to quote the whole post, but I can't fix it because mobile) You're right that they know how to drive; makes sense, since 40% of their drivers are female, indicating that they're likely reaching a female audience through different means. That, or it indicates that even though female drivers have less ad variants total, the variants that exist might be disseminated more frequently than their male counterparts; at any rate, it's clear that they're getting a female audience somehow. If their employment ratio was way off the mark for what similar companies are posting, then that would be something else.. but it's not.

40% is not 50%, and I'm pretty sure the gender distribution is 50-50 regarding driving license ownership. So even if they reach female potential applicants through other means, current gender distribution is not a sufficient argument to claim that both genders are given equal opportunities. Maybe women are actually more inclined to work as drivers than men, and are thus underrepresented in those 40%. Maybe men are more inclined and the 40-60 split is perfectly representative. The point is that there's no way to know with the distribution alone. The only way to ensure there's no discrimination in how job opportunities are distributed evenly is to give them out identically.

Thanks dad ill keep that in mind. I would agree if facebook were a job searching website and not a social media company. Targeted ads are nothing new

Totally agree. Even if this isn't illegal, it's antithetical to egalitarian culture we should all be striving for.

Social media is outright unethical in the first place. Targeted ads is just a piece of the whole morally reprehensible pie.

they offer a service to advertise jobs, therefore they are a job searching website. this has been settled law, a newspaper prints an ad for jobs they are subject to anti discrimination law, facebook does the exact same thing they should be subject to it.

Social media as a concept is not unethical - just the way it is often implemented...

I personally don't see issue here.. if the job is one that typically will only receive applicants from a certain gender, even if some people from the other gender may be interested, is it a sound investment from the advertisers to spend the money to target everyone, and get a much lower engagement ratio? Not really. It makes more sense to target the typical audience and get much more engagement. These are advertisements. They're targeted for a reason. It's not about maintaining a majority gender in a certain workplace. It's about taking into consideration who is realistically going to work there. Actual job hunting websites are never going to do any of this, because it's their purpose to list all available jobs. The same just can't be said about advertisements based on their very nature. And I know everyone hates the idea of gender roles, but sometimes you can't escape them. The simple fact of the matter is that there will always be things that are typically more appealing to males, and there will always be things that are typically more appealing to females.

Facebook ads are not a service to advertise jobs exclusively. They also have ads for clothing, blatant chinese scams, and cars. That doesn't make them a retailer, con artist, or a dealership. The same argument against communism applies here as well. It as a basis is completely innocuous and feasible but it never turns out that way. Its impossible to start a social media network and not have it be sustainable without using it as a data mining and selling network. Every implementation of it is unethical. Facebook in its entirety is an awful service but is viewed by society as a modern necessity. Its an awful cycle.

I don't even know why I bother sometimes - equating a regime that killed millions with social media scrobbling our information is ridiculously hyperbolic.

There are certain situations where this is useful though. And yes, its legal as long as you can prove the worker's sex is related to the job's Bona Fide Occupational Qualifications (which can exempt everything in the Civil Rights Act, except race). There are simply some jobs that men and women cannot do, because that role is based around the fact that they are male or female. You wouldn't have men modeling for women's clothing for example. However, being an Uber driver obviously would not be one of those occupations.

At the same time, I would rather not get ads about tampons and pads and other woman-centred stuff just because i am certainly not the target audience.

50% have drivers licenses, but as many other identical jobs will readily show you, the split isn't 50/50 in practice. Further, that's irrelevant. If they're only running a tiny fraction as many ads targeting women as they are men and they still get 40% women, they're clearly reaching out to women some other way.

If you think I'm comparing social media to communism, youre either being willfully ignorant or youre illiterate. I'm very clearly equating the arguments against them, not the two ideas themselves. My post made it incredibly plain that I was not comparing the two. Do I need to divulge further or do you understand basic information now? Do you want to present an argument against me or just keep your position on that high horse?

...Some other way that doesn't necessarily reach out as many women as the ads men receive would. It's not sufficient to just say "See! We have women too", in the same way as universities having "diversity" isn't necessarily a sign of unbiased enrollment.

That's quite different than job ads though, the analogy doesn't quite work

It's a pretty ridiculous assumption that if they we're equally advertising to male and female drivers through Facebook that they would have a 50/50 job split.

Some industries wont have diversity without it being forced on them. Its not necessarily because of sexist reasons but just because that line of work doesnt appeal to both genders equally. Just like how most trash collectors are male and most beauticians and hair stylists are female. I don't know about you but I'm completely fine with that. Why force out a woman whose willing to cut hair for a living for man who doesnt? The taxi industry and chauffeuring industry is the same in that regard. Most drivers are male and in Ubers case over 85% are male. I can't say for certain if its because Uber has sexist hiring processes, but I doubt thats the case. Uber probably wants to specifically target men because theyre more likely to apply for the job in the first place.