Three associations – the Women’s Foundation, Women Engineers and Global Witness – announced on Monday to seize the Defender of Rights and the Cnil for “sexist discrimination” concerning job offers proposed by Facebook’s algorithms.
The “Early Childhood” ad targeted 94% women
The NGO Global Witness carried out a test in March 2022 by creating five job offers formulated in a neutral way, for as many professions: secretary, airline pilot, childcare assistant, psychologist, manager of an IT structure. For broadcast, Global Witness left it up to Facebook’s algorithms to select the target audience for these ads.
However, the “Early Childhood” ad targeted 94% women, the “Secretary” ad 92% and the “Psychologist” ad 80%, indicates the Women’s Foundation in a joint press release with the two other organizations. . On the other hand, “the announcement for an airline pilot position was offered to 85% men and that of IT structure manager to 68% men”, she continues.
Results that show “gender bias in Facebook’s automated systems”
Global Witness carried out a similar campaign in March and April in the United Kingdom, Ireland, India, the Netherlands, France, South Africa, indicates the NGO on its website. “These findings, which reveal how Facebook is serving job ads overwhelmingly to one gender over another, were found in nearly every ad and in every country where we posted them,” comments Global Witness.
The test results show the “sexist biases of Facebook’s automated systems in targeting audiences”, denounces the Women’s Foundation. They “place the recruiter in good faith in a position of illegality” by not allowing “equal access of men and women to employment”.
They “perpetuate sexist stereotypes”: women in personal care jobs, men in positions of responsibility. They effectively exclude women “from better paid job opportunities”, according to the press release.
Facebook defends itself
The three associations also seized the Cnil for “potential breach with the general data protection regulations (RGPD)” and with the Data Protection Act because they believe that the processing of data by the algorithms is “opaque and illicit” and “creates discrimination on grounds of sex”.
“We do not allow advertisers to target (advertisements) (for jobs…) based on gender. We continue to work with stakeholders and experts from academia, human rights groups ‘man and other disciplines on the best ways to study and approach algorithmic fairness”, reacted a spokesperson for Meta, Facebook’s parent company, when asked by AFP.
Clarifying that gender is not the only criteria taken into account by its algorithms, Meta adds that “ads are presented to people based on various factors and take into account behaviors on and outside our technologies”.