Hidden Inequality: Why We Need to Talk About AI in the Global South with Renata Frade | AI & Equality Open Studio

Artificial Intelligence systems increasingly shape social participation, labor, visibility and access to rights. However, the social impacts of AI are uneven, often reinforcing existing inequalities — particularly for women and communities in the Global South.

This 30-minute talk is grounded in two complementary research trajectories:
(1) extensive digital ethnography with 247 women-led technology communities, focused on platforms, communication, participation and power (not AI-specific), and (2) parallel academic studies on AI, inequality and the Global South, examining how automated systems interact with structural asymmetries, governance gaps and cultural contexts.

Rather than presenting a technical or proprietary AI framework, the talk offers critical insights and reflective lenses on how AI becomes socially invisible, how inequality is reproduced through discourse and design, and why communication is central to a human-rights-based approach to AI.

Key Themes:

🔗 Explore publication: Frade, R., Wajcman, J. (2023). “Feminism and Technology: an interview with Dr. Judy Wajcman by Renata Frade”. In Technofeminism: multi and transdisciplinary contemporary views of women in technology.  https://doi.org/10.48528/0wyd-p294

About the speaker:
I am an interdisciplinary feminist researcher with deep experience in advancing feminist, decolonial, and participatory ethics in technology, particularly across Latin American and Lusophone contexts. My doctoral research mapped and analyzed 247 communities of women in technology in Brazil and Portugal, applying participatory and justice-oriented methods designed to center marginalized voices—often those of adolescents and youth in vulnerable contexts. Through projects such as Fiocruz Hack Girls and the LitGirlsBr platform, I have engaged directly with adolescent participants, developing empowering digital literacy and inclusion programs.

I have acted as co-editor and lead organizer for several transnational research outputs, including the collective volume “Technofeminism” and global solidarity events like the WeColloquium at ISEG, Lisbon. My work always seeks to foreground community voices, relational ethics, and participatory decision-making, including direct experience with reviewing and designing ethical frameworks for HCI and responsible AI, both within and outside formal IRB structures. Noted for mapping and empowering women-in-tech communities, producing influential feminist research, and engaging in ethics, justice, and participatory action.

Experienced in editorial leadership, transmedia projects, and collective knowledge-making in both academic and NGO settings (such as Girls in Tech Brazil).