In response to Jessie Lin’s post ‘EU pushes 40% quota for women on boards’, I find it rather ironic that a gender specific quota must be put in place in order to avoid inequality. While I am a woman myself, I understand that it is important for us to make our mark in the professional world and have our voices heard. However, putting a quota and threatening companies with fines simply feels wrong.  If I were hired by company knowing that they must reach a target amount of female employees, I would feel as if I was hired for the sake of filling in the numbers, not for my working  abilities. Instead of putting quotas in, officials should focus on opening up more workshops and training opportunities for both women and men to strengthen their skills in order to compete fairly when looking for jobs. Landing a job should not be determined by whether you are a man or a woman; it should be based on the skills you have and the value that you can bring to the company. Putting a gender specific quota is not fair, and counteracts the notion of equality. Like what my mother always told me: quality over quantity.

As of late September, Facebook has launched it’s very own gift services where  users will be able to purchase and send real merchandise (teddy bears, vouchers, clothes, etc) to their friends. The new service features reminders linked to friend’s birthdays, ability to track delivery progress, and unwanted gift exchanges. To ensure satisfaction and convenience  the recipient will be sent a message to input their address, as well as their preferences of the buyer’s chosen gift (ie: size, color, etc). While this takes social networking to a new level and marks Facebook’s first attempt dealing with physical goods, we must consider the risks as it can be “potentially disruptive”. This gift service introduces Facebook into the e-commerce market, and if the service proves to be successful, Facebook will undoubtedly expand to more complex services other than small gifts. As a result, with Facebook’s popularity and it’s quick access to user information, it  has the potential to beat out other e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Ebay, and take over the virtual world.

Facebook has been growing and extracting user information like rapid fire, and has transformed itself into a necessity in an individual’s day to day life. Not only does Facebook have access to our current locations, schools, photos, and other private information, with the new e-commerce approach, they will now have our credit card information and home addresses.

The question of uncertainty remains: Is this safe?

References:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/9572936/Facebook-launches-real-gift-service.html