We are at a critical turning point. In order to innovate and thrive in a rapidly changing global environment, new norms are needed. The “standardized male” is the default of flawed systems and cultural standards that currently control how we live and work – defaults so normalized we don’t even notice. From 20th century drug trials, international standards and global trading rules, to 21st century algorithmic decision making and machine learning systems, this default has proven to harm people – and the bottom line.
In fact, democracy itself is in peril. We must establish new norms.
Our focus is women and girls in all their intersections and forms. Because there has been systematic exclusion of women in defining the old rules of the system— and the continuing exclusion of women in defining the new rules – we must activate a new coalition to advocate for strategic and innovative thinking in laws, regulations and norms to achieve gender equality and strengthen democracy in the new systems we create. Women – an essential and untapped resource – with the power to reshape our society’s systems must be influentially involved in all levels of decision-making, so change can happen now, before old norms and stereotypes are baked into the machine learning systems of the future.
Particularly urgent given the scale at which ADM systems and machine learning are being deployed, we need Affirmative Action for Algorithms, to correct real life bias and barriers that prevent women from achieving their full participation and rights in the present, and in the future we invent.
As Marshall McLuhan is famously quoted:
“We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.”
This is our immediate challenge. We must establish new tools, and new norms, for lasting institutional and cultural systems change now and for the century beyond. This concerns all corners of the world. It is crucial that we focus on gender equality and democracy for both women and men, now. Then
everyone can thrive.
We must leave no one behind.