2021

Women at the Table have been asked to brief the CEDAW Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women experts on on artificial intelligence and algorithms and women’s rights and gender equality.

The briefing follows on from our brief to the European Commission Gender Equality Unit in the spring. We hope to make a clear case to CEDAW about the outsized impact biased artificial intelligence is having and will continue exponentially on the lives of women and girls in every corner of the world.

The Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy, Graduate Institute Geneva + London-based think tank Global Policy Insight and AI Policy Lab series on AI & SDGs

Panel with:

Ivana Bartoletti, Co-Founder, Women Leading in AI Network; Visiting Policy Fellow, Oxford Internet Institute

Lowri Angharad Rees, UN Women

Caitlin Kraft-Buchman, Women at the Table / <A+> Alliance

Jérôme Duberry, Research Associate & Lecturer, Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy

with Youth Leaders and Youth Professionals (YLYP) of the Committee on the Status of Women (CSW)

Speakers:

• Raesetje Sefala, AI Researcher at Mila (Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute) and a computer science Master's student at Wits University, Johannesburg. Her research focuses on creating ground truth datasets and using machine learning to study spatial segregation in South Africa, post-Apartheid.
• Sofia Kypraiou, Data Science Master's student at École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland. She is working on her master’s thesis exploring and enhancing a practical toolbox for AI and Human rights.
• Joana Varon is affiliated to the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, Executive Directress and Creative Chaos Catalyst at Coding Rights (Brazil), and Technology and Human Rights Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy from Harvard Kennedy School.

Moderator: Caitlin Kraft-Buchman, CEO/Founder, Women at the Table, co-founder <A+> Alliance for Inclusive Algorithms

The G-app: Gender Gap Application measures on which topics women are speaking, for how long, in which capacity and with what authority.

International Organisations provide the space and infrastructure for deciding the direction of the international community. Ensuring that a plurality of voices are heard is key for these decisions to have legitimacy. But how is this plurality measured? Do we understand the duration of time or the subjects on which women speak in international fora? Do we understand in which capacity women speak: as decision makers, as experts, or experientially? It's not sufficient for women merely to be present, or even to speak in the conference chamber, they must also have influence in outcomes.

Why and where can algorithms produce inequality outcomes? Why and where can algorithms be gender biased? How can a human rights-based approach be applied to computer algorithms that engage, reason about, and make decisions on people?

A workshop to further integrate concepts of intersectionality and bring work to the next step to draw clear lines from human rights principles to code, with a unique blend of human rights law and data science.

A collaboration between Women at the Table, UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, & EPFL.

A first in a series of workshops.

• Closing Keynote:  Leveraging AI and Data for Inclusion and Systems Change

  •  How can new technologies can be leveraged for systems change and tech design be leveraged to foster gender equality and inclusion. 
  •   #GDDF21. https://digitaldevforum.com/agenda/
•  Caitlin Kraft-Buchman, Co-Founder, <A+> Alliance, CEO and Founder, Women at the Table
• Dr. Tara Cookson, Assistant Professor of Gender and Development, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia

DAY ONE. Wednesday May 26th

15:45-16:00. Opening Remarks

• Dr. Vera Regitz-Zagrosek, Cardiologist and Founder, Institute of Gender in Medicine at Charité Berlin and of the International Society Gender Medicine (IGM)

16:00-17:30. Panel One
Innovative Tracking + Screening in Gynecology  

• Leon A. Boston, CEO of Mobile ODT: using artificial intelligence for cervical screening, evaluation, and sexual assault forensics.
• Siew-Veena, Founder of Testmate Health: at home STD Kits
• Dr. Sonali Mohanty Quantius, Founder of Haplomind: supporting perinatal depression and anxiety.

17:45-19:00. Panel Two
Gathering Female Specific Data Sets by Innovative Means

• Laura Symul, Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford, whose research focuses on women’s health and menstrual health in particular. This includes research on fertility, on cycle-related symptoms and on drivers of changes in vaginal microbiome communities. She uses a combination of self-tracked data from mobile phone apps and devices and clinical multi-omics data.
• Eric Dy, CEO + Co-Founder of Bloom Life: remote personalised maternal and fetal healthcare.
• Marina Pavlovic Rivas, CEO + Co-Founder of Eli Health: a product monitoring hormones in saliva at home to enable women to make informed decisions about their reproductive and general health
• Sarah Kerruish, Chief Strategy Officer of Kheiron Medical: using artificial intelligence to help radiologists detect breast cancer.

19:15-19:30 Closing Remarks

• Dr. Carole Clair, Faculty of Biology & Medicine, University of Lausanne, specialising in the differences in clinical management induced by the gender of patients. She is also co-head of the department of training, research and innovation at the Center of general medicine and public health. She is a doctor who graduated from the University of Lausanne, FMH specialist in general internal medicine, Master in Science in Epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health.

19:30-20:30 Attendee Mingling/Networking on Hopin

<A+> Alliance is super excited to host & moderate a panel on

AI DIPLOMACY FOR INCLUSION

with special guests including

• Eileen Donahue, Stanford University, former US Ambassador to the Human Rights Council
• Pamela Coke-Hamilton, Executive Director, International Trade Centre
• Aurora Díaz-Rato Revuelta, Ambassador, Permanent Representative, Permanent Mission of Spain to the United Nations Office at Geneva and other International Organisations 

Caitlin Kraft-Buchman, Moderator