Embedding Gender Bias into AI

By Diana L. Banister | 2026

UNITED NATIONS, October 16 (C-Fam) UN Women announced in September plans to build a new global Artificial Intelligence (AI) platform that will shape digital information and “embed gender equality principles” into the new technology.

UN Women claims current AI platforms use biased information and discriminatory algorithms, so the massive UN agency for women is gathering researchers, governments, technology companies, digital experts and women’s rights organizations to establish an AI hub that will influence, design and govern technology.

“AI can deepen gender inequality or help overcome it,” said Sima Bahous, Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women, in a statement announcing the plan. “At UNGA81, UN Women’s message is clear: equality is not only about representation. It is also about power. AI is already helping to reshape economic, social and political power.”

Funded in large part by left-wing European countries, UN Women has been working to gain political power since it was established in 2010 as “The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women.” Now the organization advocates for the LGBTQ agenda, reproductive rights, and climate change ideology.

Last year, the U.S. refused to endorse a UN Women’s four-year strategic plan because it promoted gender ideology and abortion in an attempt to eradicate biological reality and sex with references to “sexual orientation and gender identity,” “sexual and reproductive health and rights,” and “intersectionality.”

Civil society organizations are concerned that UN Women’s new AI hub will insert this same language and agenda into search terms and information received by consumers utilizing the technology and that its “governance” of AI will eliminate or scrutinize countering views.

“Having UN Women govern and influence AI is a frightening concept,” said Kris Ullman, President of Eagle Forum, the women’s organization founded by the late Phyllis Schlafly. “Their radical trans rights and abortion advocacy will infiltrate AI platforms and squeeze out traditional concepts of women and family the majority of people hold.”

The plan is based on a report released by UN Women in advance of the United Nations Global Dialogue on Artificial Intelligence Governance Summit and the Good Global Summit in Geneva, Switzerland, in July that denoted the multiple ways in which AI is “getting women wrong.”

In studying 133 AI systems, 44 percent demonstrated sexist language and revealed discriminatory algorithms. The report documented a pattern in which Large Language Models (LLM’s ) were found to associate women with ”home,” “family, and “children, and men with “business, “executive, “salary, and “career.” According to the report, about 20% of responses from LLM’s exhibited sexist and misogynistic attitudes that have been built into AI systems.

The report also indicated that AI is intensifying gender-based violence. A European Union funded ACT to End Violence against Women Programme surveyed women in 119 countries, finding that online attacks are now affecting women’s safety, well-being, and ability to feel safe in public. AI is making “abusive content easier to create and harder to control,” the program found.

Once an advocate against “violence against women,” UN Women now refers to “gender-based violence” in order to include all genders. The new AI hub would counter this content.

UN Women bemoans the lack of women in tech-intensive sectors, making up only 30% of the AI workforce. Their concern is that men are making the decisions about “who gets seen, how they are portrayed, and whose stories get told…without human scrutiny or gender perspective.”

Women will also be disproportionally affected by the economic disruption caused by AI’s potential replacement of many jobs, according to the report. UN Women points to the socioeconomic harms to women as AI becomes a centralized part of everyday life.

“Women and girls, their rights, voices, needs and perspectives – must therefore be central to designing it and shaping its [AI’s]future,” said Bahous.

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