Our Impact

Since 2019 the A+ Alliance has moved feminist AI from a proposition to a documented body of research, prototypes, and governance practice, most of it originating in Global South and Majority World contexts.

The founding argument

In 2019, at Women in Data Science Zürich, Women at the Table delivered the Affirmative Action for Algorithms declaration: the proposition that automated systems should be built to correct historical inequity, not merely to avoid encoding it. The A+ Alliance was founded that year to test whether the proposition could be built.

Building the field

The Feminist AI Research network

Co-led with Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica from 2021 to 2024 with IDRC support, produced a documented corpus of feminist AI research and implementation from Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia — the largest such body of work we are aware of.

The A+ Global Directory

Maps practitioners working on gender and racial bias in AI across regions and disciplines.

Open publication

through Feminist AI PubPub and the network papers archive, all under Creative Commons licensing.

Building the tools

Paper → Prototype → Pilot

Published openly as a replicable method.

The AI Innovation Sandbox for Gender Equality

Gives organizations without technical infrastructure a place to learn and build while keeping what they make.

The AI & Equality Initiative

Led by Women at the Table, translates human rights law into applicable instruments for the AI development lifecycle: impact assessment, lifecycle guidance, procurement frameworks.

Building the governance

Co-led the Generation Equality Action Coalition on Technology & Innovation for Gender Equality, carrying the agenda into multilateral policy.

The A+ Declaration’s specific mechanisms — algorithmic impact assessments, full-lifecycle testing, gender-responsive procurement guidelines with hard targets, open gender-disaggregated datasets — have moved from proposal toward standard practice in the intervening years.

Recognition

Current programmes

The Gender & AI Innovation Collective runs from February 2026 to June 2027 across three cohorts of women’s rights organizations in Africa, supported by IDRC and FCDO.

Support

Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC) · UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO)


Founding and previous co-leads: Ciudadanía Inteligente (2019), Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica (2021–2024)