AI & Equality Community: Fostering a Global Network for Inclusive AI
The AI & Equality Community represents Women at the Table’s commitment to building a vibrant global network that bridges disciplinary divides to ensure artificial intelligence advances human rights and gender equality. This multidisciplinary community connects technical experts, policymakers, social scientists, and advocates who share a vision of an inclusive AI future.
Purpose and Vision
Following the workshop series we understood that a continuing conversation was needed, and so the AI & Equality Community was created to:
- Catalyze collaboration across disciplines, regions, and sectors for sharing best practices
- Co-create AI policy, projects, and pilots using a human rights-based approach
- Challenge the myth that data and AI systems are neutral, demonstrating how they can carry and transfer biases and inequalities
- Provide practitioners with the tools and common vocabulary to develop technology that respects human dignity and equality
Remarkable Growth
From its founding in 2023, the community has experienced extraordinary expansion:
- Over 600 members representing 57 countries across five continent
- Geographic diversity matched by disciplinary breadth, members bring expertise from technology, social sciences, law, business, and policy domains, reflecting growing thirst for and recognition of the need for multidisciplinary approaches to AI governance
Key Accomplishments
Knowledge Production and Exchange
- Open Studios, PubTalks and panel discussions addressing topics from climate change and AI to feminist approaches to technology governance
- Community Commentaries in response to calls for inputs by international organizations such as UNESCO, UNDP, and the Council of Europe. We published 5 community commentaries, and our input comment for the U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) is cited 5 times throughout their policy report.
- “Re-Visions of Now and Future I, II & IIII” featuring community essays exploring topics from far-right exploitation of AI to trauma-informed digital connections for trafficking survivors
- Research project examining bias in Large Language Models, demonstrating how collective expertise can address emerging challenges
Methodological Framework
- “Integrating Human Rights Considerations Along the AI Lifecycle” white paper providing practical guidance and questions for Human Rights Impact Assessment at every stage of AI development
- Regional adaptations with context-specific applications of the AI & Equality Human Rights Toolbox
- Latin America in collaboration with CENIA, Chile’s National Center for Artificial Intelligence
- Africa in collaboration with African Centre for Technology Studies
- Public Sector Toolbox with a focus on AI Procurement in 2025
Looking Forward
The AI & Equality Community continues to grow as a catalyst for systemic change in how AI is developed and deployed. By creating multiple pathways for engagement, from social media to in-depth courses, the community ensures that diverse stakeholders can meaningfully participate in shaping AI governance.
As one community member reflected, “What’s most powerful about this approach is that it doesn’t treat human rights as a constraint on innovation—it shows how centering human dignity can actually lead to better, more sustainable technologies.”
Through this thriving community, Women at the Table is addressing the persistent challenge of bridging abstract principles with practical implementation, ensuring that human rights and gender equality are not merely afterthoughts but foundational elements in the development of artificial intelligence worldwide.