Gender perspective in Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

In Spain, the majority of university students are women, but the gender distribution in different fields of study is uneven and there are certain disciplines, as engineering and some experimental sciences where less than 30% are women. This reduced participation of women, very low in disciplines related with technology motivates the hegemonic presence of androcentric and sexist values both in knowledge and in the products and information technologies that we can find in the market.

In highly masculinized disciplines the inclusion of the gender perspective is important whenever the content, the results or the applications of a subject may affect human beings directly or indirectly. Specially, in disciplines related with technology where it is very common for men and women to be affected differently by technological developments. This paper focus in the context of Artificial Intelligence (AI) field, where the majority of professionals are men and their experiences shape and dominate algorithm creation. To recognize the existence of gender discriminatory biases in the algorithms and limit their consequences in the offline world, we need to introduce the gender perspective in these studies. In this document we analyze the degree of introduction of the gender perspective in the AI grades and how to improve the gender competences of the students