Cohort: SOMET 37°
Topic of the thesis: Technofeminism in practice: assessing the design of automated decision-making processes in public services
Abstract: After ten years of developing theoretical insights on the relationship between gender and technology, sociologist Judy Wajcman conceptualized technofeminism as an attempt to summarize and critique previous approaches (Wajcman, 2004). Gender and technology studies was the first comprehensive field of study to analyze the consequences that technologies have on different social groups. Repurposing the important tools and contributions of technofeminism and social constructivism, this project aims to bring attention to the design stages of automated processes used in public services. European governments are increasingly adopting automated decision-making processes driven by algorithms or artificial intelligence (AI) to offer services such as the allocation of benefits, pensions, medical care, and tax assistance. In some cases, these applications have caused serious and tangible damage to people's lives (e.g. discrimination, unfairness, lack of transparency and accountability) such as the Dutch Toeslagenaffaire (Hadwick & Lan, 2021). Various solutions are being discussed, including in the context of the future European AI Act. The approaches, however, are rarely case-sensitive and often unsystematic, focusing exclusively on unbiasing data, or technical fixes, and never on the involvement of human values in design, eventually pandering to the negligence of the stakeholders involved. This empties the design process of accountability and transparency. This research will take two different countries and cultures as case studies in terms of automation of public services, Italy and the Netherlands, to analyze how they are governing these processes and how human culture, social and political values may influence the outcome of the automated recommendation. Instead of studying algorithms, this research will focus on studying the humans and values involved in their construction, in order to bring attention back to the human role in making design choices that can adversely affect system outputs and empirically assess how different governments deal with accountability in the digital age.
Research interests: Science and technology studies; Gender and technology studies; Ethics of technology; Digital policy; Data justice.
Graduated from: University of Milan (BA); Leiden University (The Netherlands) (MA).
Degrees obtained: BA in Philosophy; MA in Philosophical Perspectives on Politics and the Economy.
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