Women rights in the era of the AI, has swiftly taken over the world.

In an era of increasing digitization, as artificial intelligence (AI) pervades every aspect of our lives, there are rising fears that the lack of effective regulation of such technologies may create more harm than good. The threats posed by AI in this regard disproportionately harm women compared to men. Women Rights in the Era of AI.

Women are becoming increasingly susceptible in today’s technology-driven world, from demonstrating gender bias to dealing with the consequences of data privacy and security breaches.

This difficulty is exacerbated for women in APAC countries, particularly Southeast Asian countries, where age-old social stereotypes still have a considerable impact.

AI Bias

AI achieves precise results by combining data, statistical analysis, and human-created theories. The operation of AI is dependent on the data provided to it, which mostly determines the outputs it produces.

AI, like the data it is fed, is neither immune nor exempt from human prejudice, and hence its decisions are prone to the same bias.

In recent years, there have been multiple reports of AI bias having a direct and negative impact on women’s rights

Such AI biases are a significantly greater problem than human bias, because AI has the capacity to aggravate these biases while also having far-reaching implications that go beyond those of human actions.

Amazon’s AI Recruitment Tool

In 2015, Amazon’s machine-learning specialists discovered that the AI system used as their recruiting engine ‘did not like women’.

The data presented to the AI tool demonstrated male dominance, prompting the software to train itself that men were preferred. This had the effect of penalizing resumes that included the word “women’s”.

Although Amazon remedied this bias, there was no guarantee that the software would not reveal other forms of bias in the recruitment process, eventually leading to the AI tool’s discontinuance.

Apple Credit Card

Similarly, Apple’s credit card, which uses AI algorithms to judge creditworthiness, was accused of discriminating against women by offering lower credit limits to women than to males.

The problem gained attention in 2019 after an influencer claimed on his X (previously Twitter) that Apple Credit Card had displayed misogyny.

Despite having the same income and credit score, he claimed that his credit line was 20 times that of his wife’s. The software did not ask gender input, which made this charge confusing.

The discrimination it demonstrated occurred without any understanding of gender, highlighting AI’s ability to exacerbate gender-based bias.

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Gym Software

A gym in the United Kingdom employed computer software that automatically classified Dr. Louise Shelby, a woman, as a male when she typed “doctor” as her title. She was allowed to use the men’s changing room after being identified as male.

She was told that if she wanted it rectified, she needed to remove her professional title from the gym’s online registration system. These examples demonstrate AI’s potential to aggravate systemic bias against women, reversing decades of progress in women’s rights.

Furthermore, such actions violate anti-discrimination legislation, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). It defines “discrimination” in the following way: “any distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex which has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by women, irrespective of their marital status, on a basis of equality of men and women, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field”.

This notion implies that when AI systems demonstrate such bias against women, they effectively perpetuate discrimination and maintain socioeconomic disparities.

Without a strong legal framework overseeing the junction of innovation, ethics, and law, as well as procedures to address these AI shortcomings, protecting fundamental rights, particularly those of women, becomes a hard task.

Privacy & Data Protection

Without the data provided to it, AI is an empty vessel, which highlights the growing concern about the impact of AI technologies on data privacy.

One’s face characteristics or voice can be exploited by ‘bad’ actors to make AI-generated phony photographs or films, mostly of women (often sexual in nature), to harm their social reputation, exact retribution, demonstrate’masculinity’,’sextort’, bully, or propagate disinformation.

Such ‘deepfakes’ are non-consensual constructs that mostly target women. According to Sensity AI’s analysis, 99 percent of the non-consensual sexual deepfakes involved women.

Individuals, especially women, who have ventured to campaign against such image-based sexual assault have encountered being victims of such abuse.

There are worries that the generation of deepfakes does not constitute the processing of people’ ‘personal data’ and hence does not violate their data or privacy rights.

Some claim that data protection standards do not apply to the governance of deepfakes because the content created by deepfake AI technologies does not belong to any real people.

According to Chidera Okolie, while this argument may be valid in scenarios involving deepfakes of non-existent or fictional humans, it becomes less credible when applied to deepfakes of real, existing individuals.

Okolie maintains that when a deepfake is created using an individual’s data, and the end result, i.e. the deepfake, can be traced back to that person, it would fall under Article 4(1) of the EU General Data Protection Regulation: Regulation (EU) 2016/679, the definition of ‘personal data’, which is defined as “any information related to an identified or identifiable natural person.”

As a result, a deepfake that can be linked to an individual may be considered ‘personal data’ for that person—a non-consensual deepfake thus violates an individual’s data and privacy rights.

Deepfake

The development and broadcast of nonconsensual sexual deepfakes starring women can cause serious psychological harm. In principle, there is a clear comparison between seeing pornographic deepfakes and being drugged and assaulted.

This explains AI’s propensity to perpetuate gender-based violence against women, making it the modern form of depriving women of their sexual autonomy.

Apart from the mental trauma suffered by the victim, the consequences of sexual deepfakes targeting women are especially severe in emerging Southeast Asian nations like Pakistan, where the killing of women in the name of ‘honor’ is still common.

Although the country’s legal system prohibits honor crimes, pervasive cultural stereotypes frequently justify such senseless acts, even leading to the acquittal of people convicted of murder under the pretense of honor.

At the national level, different countries have different legal frameworks to address this issue. Most of them outright criminalize deepfakes as sex crimes. UK’s Revenge Pornography Guidelines, Nigeria’s Sexual Offenses Act 2003 and Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Act 2015, Pakistan’s Electronic Crimes Act (PECA) 2016 and Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) 1860, all of Canada’s Legislation has been enacted under the Sex Offenses Act. Women, including non-consensual explicit deepfakes targeting women.

Technology and Women at Work

The quantitative and qualitative consequences of technological progress also disproportionately harm women. Women now hold a sizable proportion of low-skilled and labor-intensive jobs, which are on the verge of displacement as automation and technology improve.

McKinsey & Company estimates that between 2016 and 2030, approximately 15% of the global workforce might be displaced.

The International Labour Organization’s research ‘The Game Changers: Women and the Future of Work in Asia and the Pacific’ highlights how technology will disrupt the garment sector in APAC countries, which is dominated by working women in the region.

Women from Southeast Asian nations with conservative social traditions, such as India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, have benefited greatly from the garment industry in terms of economic and social status.

As a result, the technological displacement of this industry would deal a serious blow to women’s economic and social rights throughout the region.

Women Job Categories

With the phasing out of low-skilled and labor-intensive industries, women may find new chances in formerly male-dominated job categories.

However, technology does not automatically bridge gender inequality—”it largely depends on the design of the technology and the capabilities of women from under-represented groups to access and use technologies and solutions that respond to their needs.”

While women have the ability to thrive at jobs historically undertaken by males, the key element in their transition from low-skilled professions to roles previously monopolized by men is deeply rooted cultural preconceptions and attitudes.

Nonetheless, online work procurement via app-based platforms has provided women with access to occupations in formerly male-dominated areas.

The flexibility associated with such work procurement is a means to provide women with additional job opportunities; yet, research by Barzilay and Ben David demonstrates that male and female online workers have significantly different pay rates.

Furthermore, the rate of digitization has placed labor laws substantially behind the changing labor landscape, potentially jeopardizing women’s economic and social rights. Womens, on the other hand, may have more prospects for employment in the technology industry, which includes automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence, where they might work as technicians, clerical, or administrative support personnel.

In the Philippines, women already account for 59% of the business processing outsourcing workforce. To preserve and expand this trend across APAC, women in the region must receive the required training and assistance. Furthermore, certain organizations, such as All Claims Adjustment Bureau, engage female workers from the APAC region for remote jobs.

Although cost-effectiveness may be the major motivator for such attempts, these opportunities remain critical pillars in defending women’s employment rights in Asia Pacific in the face of a changing technological landscape.

Conclusion

As humanity enters the fourth industrial revolution, there are real concerns about the negative effects of technology on women’s rights. This issue stems from reports of AI discrimination, infringement of women data privacy rights, and the impending threat of employment displacement due to technology and automation.

The unparalleled pace of technological innovation highlights the necessity for regulation of AI and other developing technologies. Such regulation should attempt to take a human-rights (or possibly women-rights) approach, testing and verifying AI software in accordance with existing women’s rights norms and standards. It also calls for an upgrade to the existing legal framework for protecting women’s rights in order to maintain them relevant in today’s world.

Regarding the potential threat of women’s job displacement, states should implement measures to assist women in preparing for and adapting to the changing tech landscape by investing in the development of their abilities through training.

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Strategies to end clutches of IMF dependency for national liberation.

For nations clutches by the IMF, escaping and achieving economic autonomy has fundamental significance.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) was established in 1944 to deal with the Great Depression of 1936 and the ravages of World War II.

The main objectives of its establishment were the establishment and security of the global financial system, the promotion of international trade and thereby increasing the income and employment of countries, maintaining the stability of the exchange rate and the members. This includes providing loans to countries in the event of international payments deficits.

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To achieve these objectives, the IMF applies its own conditions to lending and periodically publishes its assessment reports that examine the performance of countries and credit rating agencies around the world use these reports.

Do Even other international organizations and countries also provide loans based on the IMF’s assessment report. So this report is very important for any country.

However, success or failure in these review reports depends on how successful a country has been in achieving the goals and conditions set by the IMF.

Conditions of IMF

The relationship between Pakistan and the IMF is very old. We first took a loan from the IMF in 1958 and since then we have received loans 22 times under various agreements.

The current program was launched in 2019 but the deal could not be completed and the country had to wait patiently for its last two episodes. After that, in July of last year, it made a standby arrangement of 9 months to obtain three billion dollars from the IMF.

In the 2019 program, Pakistan was bound to reduce the fiscal deficit, increase the interest rate i.e. apply strict fiscal policies, eliminate subsidies, especially electricity and gas subsidies. , the independence of the state bank (whereby the central bank would be obliged to lend or lend to the government in certain forms), raising electricity and gas rates to the cost of production, increasing tax rates, fixing the value of the dollar. Market based on supply and demand etc.

Interestingly, these terms are not new to us. All these terms were present in the 2008 and 2013 agreements as well. However, prior to the 2019 agreement, IMF conditions had never been fully implemented, and governments generally implemented all conditions that directly affect national sovereignty and public welfare.

Avoided But the special thing about the current program is that this time due to the bad economic situation, the cold behavior of friendly countries and the inflexible conditions of the international organization, the government is trying hard to fulfill them.

In the previous agreement, the State Bank has been given autonomy, the control over the dollar has been removed, the prices of electricity and gas are being gradually increased, the government is borrowing from commercial banks instead of the State Bank for its expenditure.

Is it the IMF’s Job to Fix Electricity and Gas Rates?

The IMF presented the first review report of the Standby Arrangement in January 2024, clearly praising the performance of the Government of Pakistan and stressing that the continuation of these policies is the guarantee of development.

To understand the impact of these measures, if the economic indicators from 2008 to 2013 are compared with the economic situation of the current program 2019, the inflation rate in 2008 was 17 percent and the real GDP growth rate was 11 percent during this period.

It decreased to just 2% in 2015-2016. The real growth rate was recorded at 6.1% in 2017-2018. While the trade deficit ranged from 17.13 to 31 billion dollars.

Economic data from 2019 to 2023 in the current program shows that food prices have historically increased by about 48 percent during this period.

The value of the rupee suffered a record decline, the growth rate was negative 0.9 while the trade deficit went up to the level of 48.3 billion dollars in the year 2021-22. However, the IMF report promises improvement by the end of fiscal year 2024.

Among the risks identified in the report, one of the main challenges is the repayment of external debts, which is more of a challenge than the question of where the dollars will come from to repay them. Businesses are also suffering from high interest rates and expensive electricity and gas.

On the other hand, although the IMF report gives good news to Pakistanis about inflation to come down in the coming years, a common citizen who is already worried about the recent hike in electricity and gas rates, the IMF terms One can clearly understand that the matter is not over here.

“The Loan itself has become a Major Risk”

The IMF’s terms are like a doctor trying to treat every patient with Panadol. Similarly, the IMF also seems to make similar demands from every country in the name of economic reforms. For example, Argentina and Egypt, which have taken loans from the IMF several times like Pakistan, have also had the same demands of the IMF.

Like Pakistan, these countries also adopted the reforms of the International Financial Institution and their results are not different from Pakistan and both countries are suffering from economic depression.

In the report published by the Arab Center Washington on November 17, 2022, regarding Egypt, the impact of IMF agreements on the Egyptian economy was evaluated.

In this report, the author writes that the new agreement with the IMF will not solve the country’s economic problems but will exacerbate them.

Famous Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglits, who was also the senior vice president of the World Bank, writes in his article published in the American journal Foreign Policy on February 1, 2022, that ‘It is ironic that Argentina has to pay for its international payments. Borrowing and then repaying the IMF loan itself became a major risk’.

He further writes that even those with basic knowledge of economics know that austerity leads to economic contraction, but there is a thought that this austerity will lead to economic expansion, but it is not. It happened and it cannot happen.

Exactly the same lesson is being taught to the Pakistani government today that it is necessary to adopt a policy of austerity.

Austerity can be supported, but non-developmental spending, elite favoritism and wasteful government spending should be brought under its purview rather than putting the poor people in the name of austerity into more trouble by increasing inflation.

Recent IMF Review Report

By reading the recent review report, it seems that the reins of all the country’s institutions are now in the hands of the IMF and it is running the country’s economy as an economic management company rather than an international organization.

Running state-owned enterprises, determining employee salaries, determining tax rates, determining spending on education and health, monitoring unique income support and welfare programs for the support of the poor, etc.

It can be taken to mean that the IMF wants the Pakistani economy to stand on its feet and get our loan back, but the problem is that the government can increase its revenue by increasing the tax net or better running national institutions.

Which will be in the form of domestic currency rupees, but the government needs dollars to pay the debt, where will they come from?

That is, it is a web of debts in which a new loan will have to be taken to repay the old loan. And it seems that it is the responsibility of this economic management company to see to it that no such policy is made that will free this country from the clutches of the IMF.

Clutches of IMF

Basically, no country goes to the IMF to meet its fiscal deficit or for government expenditure, but the need to borrow from the IMF arises when a country has foreign exchange for external payments.

In other words, it does not have dollars and it cannot get loans from any other country. Without loans and aid, exports are the only source of dollars, whereas the case of Pakistan is that the government is working on an export promotion policy, but despite this, the gap between demand and supply of dollars is widening.

The growth rate of our exports is low while the rate of imports is high, due to which the current account is in deficit.

There is a need for the government to focus on import substitution policy along with import promotion. Reduce the use of imported raw materials in industries, ensure supply of cheap electricity and gas, create political stability, ban the use of imported goods at the government level, fiscal and monetary policy.

Instead of the will of F, they should be made independently according to the country’s economic conditions. We can make our country and people prosperous only by taking these and other such drastic measures.

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