Feminism and Technology: Impact on Artificial Intelligence

This case study explores the impact of feminism on artificial intelligence and technology. It discusses the feminist approach to innovation and the role of technology in achieving gender equality. The study also examines the positive and negative perspectives of feminists towards technology and provides real-life examples.

Running head: INNOVATION CASE STUDY
Innovation Case Study
Name of the Student
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Author Note

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Table of Contents
Introduction:...................................................................................................................2
Background:...................................................................................................................2
Feminist’s say about Technologies and Artificial Intelligence:.....................................3
Feminist’s approach to the Innovation:..........................................................................4
Impact of Feminism on Artificial Intelligence:..............................................................4
Examples:.......................................................................................................................5
Conclusion:....................................................................................................................5
References:.....................................................................................................................7

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Introduction:
The feminism is considered as something which is a range of ideologies, political
movement and some of the social movements which consist the same goal that defines,
achieve and establishes the economic, personal, social and political equality of the genders.
The main idea of feminism is establishing professional and educational opportunities for
women which are exactly equal to the men (Weisman 2003). The movement of feminism has
been established to gain the fair rights for the woman which includes an equal right of voting,
working, earning fair wages, owning property (Ferree and Martin 1995) and receiving proper
education.
This process of feminism can be affected by technologies and artificial intelligence.
Considering this, in this paper what the feminists got to say about the artificial intelligence
and the technologies will be described briefly. Following that approach of the feminists to the
innovation will be described in brief and in the further section impact of feminism on the
artificial intelligence will be explored.
Background:
From the very old days, feminist has faced various type of problems in the process of
achieving gender equality. They faced this type of problems due to the fact that they are
considered as the reserved persons in the society in the old days (Porter 1996). In the present,
they are still being considered as the reserved gender in many societies, and several things are
restricted to them while there are no restrictions for the men. Thus, in this case, the most
important issues are that females are not able to live their life freely by their choices. They
face the barrier in their society, and this feminism helps the woman to overcome this problem
of the society by creating protest against them.

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Feminist’s say about Technologies and Artificial Intelligence:
According to the feminists, technology is both friend and foe in achieving their
targets. Technologies have helped feminism in various ways and have also set back feminism
in several cases. According to the Maggie Nielson who is a feminist by herself and CEO of
the Global Philanthropy Group, technology is able to provide strengths with the woman in
two ways. The first is that the technology is able to give voice to the issues of the woman and
secondly the technology is able to connect the issue of the woman with a larger group
(Feenberg 2010). The role of the women in the technological development has been neglected
partially in the history the homo fabers always presented as a male. In the pasts the
contribution of the women in the technology largely ignored but as per the present situation
fields are undergoing a massive transformation due to the feminist scholarship. Now the
perspective of the feminist on technological history will do something more than just filling
another piece of women’s missing part (Rothschild 1981). Recent researches shows that
feminists think that their contribution in the technological development ignored due to their
home centric works which includes the food preparation, children caring and due to their
living patters in the social organization. Furthermore, in the next section how the technology
is creating problem for the feminists will be discussed.
According to the feminists, it is not necessary that the technologies will always help
them out in every situation. In many of the cases, these same technology has set the woman
back (Faulkner 2001). Supporting this statement feminist, Nielson told that during her work
of the sex trafficking she heard about some discussion that the combination of the internet ad
platform and a mobile phone had made the ordering of girl easier compared with the online
pizza ordering. Women are 75% of the total human trafficking in the world, and the new
technologies are igniting it more (Weber 2006). There are also various issues of the
anonymity within the internet for which the woman being ridiculed, terrorized and bullied.

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However the next section of this essay discusses about the impact of the Artificial
Intelligence in feminism.
While considering the Artificial Intelligence in the world of feminism, there are two
type women, one who think AI is an active contributor in the society another believes that
there is no evolution is occurring due to the AI. The first type of women has a positive
approach to the AI because in some way they are related with some technical jobs (Liebowitz
2001), or they are trying to learn some kind of technical things which are important for their
job criteria (Porter and Kramer 2002). The other group of feminists has a negative approach
to the AI because they are afraid or feels discomfort with the new technologies. They find it
extremely difficult for them to cope up with these type of new technologies. The next part of
this essay will discuss about the approach of the feminists towards the process of the
innovation.
Feminist’s approach to the Innovation:
The feminists approach to the innovation in various types of ways. Some of the key
insights of the feminist approaches to the innovation are described below.
 From the approach of the feminists towards the innovation, the innovation is
inherently political (O’Reilly 2016). It is inherently political from their approach
because there is not anything like the neutral intervention.
 The approach of the feminists towards the innovation describes that there can be no
designed solution for societal challenges (Hare‐Mustin 1978). They believe in this
approach because of the system of injustice interconnected and complex. Thus the
innovation does not have any type of tech-powered solution to societal problems.
 According to the feminists, the innovations which are developed individually cannot
replace the services of state provision.

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Also, the recognition values are included within the social processes of the scientific
study and the innovations has successfully challenged the assumptions of the neutral forces
(Gutierrez and Lewis 1994). This is having a relevance to understand the particular difficulty
that has been faced by the women in process of gaining the access to practical and theoretical
innovations. The feminist writers on the science and technology has detected the presence of
the gender marking in root categories of the innovations and natural sciences. Furthermore, in
the next section how the process of the feminism is reflecting an impact on the Artificial
Intelligence will be discussed.
Impact of Feminism on Artificial Intelligence:
In the development of a particular type of Artificial Intelligence inclusion of feminism
has various types of impacts. When a feminist centred AI is being produced, there can be
harmful gender biasness (Bowen, Swim and Jacobs 2000). The gender bias problem in
Artificial Intelligence is a huge problem, but actually, it comes with its own solution (Weise
2016). This gender biasness occurs in the AI systems because of the biased algorithms. These
type of biased algorithm can come from a feminist who is actively working, in particular, AI
development (Miconi 2017). Due to that biasness, the AI can produce wrong information to
the users which are not really expected. An example of feminism on the artificial intelligence
development is the research at the University of Washington when top 100 google images are
considered for 45 different professions. In this case, women have represented most of the
searches as compared to the representation of the data from the Bureau of the Labour
Statistics. Thus due to the biasness, some wrong concept is forwarded to the user.
Additionally, some of the examples of the feminism approach to the technologies and
innovation will be discussed shortly in the below section of the essay.

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Examples:
To describe how the technologies can help them case study of the Gloria Steinem has
been taken by the feminists. In the year of the 1960 and 1970, Gloria Steinem helped usher in
the movement of the women's liberation. In this case, to state, the importance of the
technology to them feminists stated that a much louder voice could have been created that
time if the technologies of today are available at that time (Waring and Steinem 1988). As an
example, Twitter can be considered, which could have been given a boost to the feminists of
that time as they might be able to reach a large number peoples using Twitter or Facebook at
that time.
To describe the approach of feminism to the innovation example of the Chayn can be
illustrated. Chayn is an open sourced global project which helps women to experience abuse
and violence with various types of tools and information support. This project aims to fill the
lack of information of the women who face problem regards finding relevant support on the
internet, map services, legal support and psychological support to address various types of
issues. Hence, in the following section of this essay it will be summarised briefly to get a
short overview of the essay.
Conclusion:
From the above discussion, it can be concluded that feminists and the technologies
can be considered friend and foe of each other. In the current case study, the thoughts of the
feminists on the technologies and the artificial intelligence have been shared. From the
analysis of the thoughts, it has been assessed the many feminist are having negative thinking
towards the technologies and the artificial intelligence while the other feminist is having
positive thinking towards the technologies and the artificial intelligence. Technologies have
created many opportunities for the feminist while this technology is also used against them.

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The approach of the feminists towards the innovation is also shared in this case study. It is
assessed that the overall approach of them was quite negative on the innovation. Following
that the impact of feminism on artificial intelligence has been shared. Further, two real-life
examples regarding the relevance of the case study are shared.

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References:
Bowen, C.C., Swim, J.K. and Jacobs, R.R., 2000. Evaluating Gender Biases on Actual Job
Performance of Real People: A Meta‐Analysis 1. Journal of Applied Social
Psychology, 30(10), pp.2194-2215.
Faulkner, W., 2001. The Technology Question in Feminism: A View from Feminist
Technology Studies. Women’s Studies International Forum, 24 (1), 79-95.
Feenberg, A., 2010. Ten paradoxes of technology. Techné: Research in Philosophy and
Technology, 14(1), 3-15.
Ferree, M.M. and Martin, P.Y. eds., 1995. Feminist organizations: Harvest of the new
women's movement. Temple University Press.
Gutierrez, L.M. and Lewis, E.A., 1994. Community organizing with women of color: A
feminist approach. Journal of Community Practice, 1(2), pp.23-44.
Hare‐Mustin, R.T., 1978. A feminist approach to family therapy. Family process, 17(2),
pp.181-194.
Liebowitz, J., 2001. Knowledge management and its link to artificial intelligence. Expert
systems with applications, 20(1), pp.1-6.
Miconi, T., 2017. A note on the impossibility of" fairness". arXiv preprint
arXiv:1707.01195.
O’Reilly, T., 2016. Open data and algorithmic regulation. In B. Goldstein & L. Dyson (Eds.),
Beyond transparency: Open data and the future of civic innovation. San Francisco: Code for
America Press.
Porter, M. E., 1996. What Is Strategy? In Harvard Business Review, Nov.-Dec., pp. 61-78.

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Porter, M. E., and Kramer, M. R., 2002. The competitive advantage of corporate
philanthropy. Harvard Business Review, 80(12), 56-68.
Rothschild, J.A., 1981. A feminist perspective on technology and the future. Women's studies
international quarterly, 4(1), pp.65-74.
Waring, M. and Steinem, G., 1988. If women counted: A new feminist economics. San
Francisco: Harper & Row.
Weber, J., 2006. From science and technology to feminist technoscience. Handbook of
Gender and Womens Studies. London: Sage, 397-414.
Weise, J., 2016. The Dawn of the 'Tryborg. Retrieved
from https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/30/opinion/the-dawn-of-the-tryborg.html?mcubz=0
Weisman, R., 2003. The Luck Factor. Retrieved
from http://www.richardwiseman.com/resources/The_Luck_Factor.pdf