Avneet Kaur

In spite of the giant strides made in many areas of gender equality, the arena where gender parity seems a distant dream is technology governance. Women play an important role as change agents. However, frequently women are excluded from policy formulation about data use, privacy, ethics, algorithm functioning etc. Women’s exclusion has had cascading effects. Gender bias is an integral part of software, algorithms add up to systemic discrimination and biased search results. This is because such algorithms are designed by human beings and reflect the prejudices they carry. The exclusion of women compels them to resort to alternative platforms like online spaces to engage in public discourse. Here too, they are subjected to digital gender-based violence. Without the purposeful involvement of women in policy-making in the field, technologies will continue to exacerbate gender inequalities. An Artificial Intelligence-based system works on and gains insights from data generated by and collected from humans. Thus, it adopts the same biases that humans carry, including gender bias. Consequently, firms build digital products and services that buttress inequality. For instance, facial recognition technologies are infamous for significantly misidentifying women, particularly, women of colour. An added dimension of the digital gender divide is that women make up less than 29% of “STEM” (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics) researchers globally. The chapter examines the risks and opportunities in the digital revolution from the standpoint of education, work and social/welfare services from a gendered lens. It concludes by providing policy recommendations to bridge the gender gap in technology governance.