Women everywhere got the dish. Over a four year period,  Amazon’s hiring algorithm overwhelmingly favored men. So basically, now robots are discriminating against women. Amazon’s hiring algorithm essentially pushed forward more male candidates than female, creating a large disparity between women and men put forward for jobs at the now ubiquitous and enormous global purveyor of goods, music, and entertainment.

According to a report from Reuters, the algorithm would automatically omit or downgrade women from consideration for roles if their resume or online profile included the word ‘women’ or ‘woman’. So if a candidate was the Captain of their College Women’s Basketball team, they wouldn’t make it to the interview phase. The artificial intelligence (A.I.) platform was smart, it learned behaviors and imitated them to suit Amazon’s needs. After years of using the platform, and hiring managers themselves favoring male candidates, the algorithm took those learned behaviors and essentially removed women from the equation.

After this ‘quirk’ was discovered, Amazon stopped using the hiring algorithm. Across the U.S., 55% of human resources managers are relying on A.I. platforms to screen their candidates and select who makes it to the interview stage. Switching platforms isn’t enough to fill the chasm of gender disparity at Amazon. Tell Amazon to do more than simply remove this algorithm, commit to equal gender hiring practices company-wide.

Sex-based discrimination is against the law. That’s why 90% of Fortune 500 companies have policies on the books that improve gender representation in the workplace and benefit women. Amazon’s own policies already say they support gender diversity in the workplace, but their statistics show a different story. Only 26% of Amazon’s Managers are women. Right now, 40% of Amazon’s global workforce are female. Women account for 51% of the global population, tell Amazon to commit to having 50% of their workforce and managers be women.

Call on Amazon to right the wrong of their gender biased hiring system and commit to a gender-equal workforce.