According to reports from Business Standard, UN Women has warned that artificial intelligence is leaving women at higher risk of discrimination and violence, citing multiple studies that highlight significant gender biases in AI systems. A Stanford Social Innovation Review analysis found that 44% of 133 AI systems demonstrated gender bias, while another UNESCO study revealed that 20% of responses by large language models exhibited sexist and misogynistic attitudes. As reported by Business Standard, these systems have been found associating women with terms like 'home', 'family', and 'children' and men with 'business', 'executive' and 'career'. According to Jibu Elias, India lead at Mozilla Foundation, these biases reflect existing societal prejudices rather than intentional programming, noting that AI systems show doctors as male and nurses as female due to generic concepts of women as caregivers.
As reported by Business Standard, UN Women reveals that in a study of 138 countries, only 24 referenced gender in a national AI strategy, with just 18 including substantive gender-responsive provisions that can help AI detect stereotypes and improve accessibility. The organisation highlights that almost one in four surveyed women human rights defenders, activists and journalists had experienced AI-assisted online violence, while 12% report having experienced the non-consensual sharing of personal images. According to Business Standard, six percent of women have been targeted through 'deepfakes' or manipulated images/video, while more than one in four have received unsolicited sexual advances through digital messaging. Osama Manzar, founder and director of Digital Empowerment Foundation, notes that the digital ecosystem has historically deprived women and AI is adding a top layer to it.
According to a new report presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council, Reem Alsalem, the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, warned that mothers face widespread violence and discrimination linked directly to their role as mothers. The report examines how economic hardship, social discrimination, harmful stereotypes and weak legal recognition contribute to violence against mothers in different parts of the world. Many mothers face lower wages, fewer career opportunities and financial insecurity after having children, a pattern often described as the 'motherhood penalty'. The report identifies several groups of mothers who experience particularly high levels of discrimination and violence, including indigenous women, migrants, refugees, stateless women, adolescent mothers, older mothers, incarcerated mothers, single mothers, mothers with disabilities, mothers of children with disabilities, and women who oppose harmful practices affecting their children.
According to Business Standard, a report by the International Labour Organization in March revealed that women remain underrepresented in fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and AI, making up only 30% of the AI workforce globally. Juhi Bhatnagar, a Gurugram-based AI investor, highlights that the entire concept of reskilling is far more challenging for women as they are already performing multiple roles. As reported by Business Standard, the economic disruption of AI is expected to fall hardest on women, with the job market amid the AI wave largely focused on reskilling but women facing deeper practical challenges in balancing multiple responsibilities.
According to Business Standard, the warning by UN Women comes as the global stage prepares for United Nations Global Dialogue on Artificial Intelligence Governance from July 6 to 7 and AI for Good Global Summit in Geneva, Switzerland from July 7 to 10. The organisation emphasizes that safety should be a key component at the designing stage itself, with experts noting that it is important to know who is building the technology before discussing users. As reported by Business Standard, Jibu Elias from Mozilla Foundation notes that any homogeneous group tends to miss issues that diverse groups identify much earlier, highlighting that technologies like facial recognition and many applications put data breach risks because nobody addressed those issues at the design level. The report also calls for greater public recognition of the social importance of motherhood and education programmes that challenge harmful attitudes towards women and mothers.
