11/19/2019
H22 provided a unique opportunity to initiate and test cutting edge ideas in making a smarter city. Cities are critical laboratories for democracy, locations for societal progress and innovation, as well engines of economic growth. Citizen co-creation, galvanizing 21st century cities that have gender equality, climate change resilience, and democratic values at their core of creativity and governance is what Women at the Table call a Smart Feminist City.
Smart Feminist Cities offer an opportunity to close the gap between visions of equality for women and the cities we live in now – uniting SDG 11 to “make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable” with SDG5’s ambition to “achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls”.
However, as the world is being reshaped by technology and our cities reshaped along with it, old biases are being baked into new technology sets. That is, with the increasing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Automated-Decision Making (ADM) in the design and distribution of services by cities, implicit stereotypes and unconscious bias being stripped from the analog world are being entrenched into the digital world increasingly used by cities.
We need structural and systemic inclusion of a gender lens in community decision-making and budgeting and to incorporate a gender lens into the climate justice and climate change movements. Most importantly, inclusive algorithms