Gender Equity and the Limits of AI Governance

​This session, featuring Dr. Scott Anderson from UBC's Department of Philosophy, will examine whether AI policy is actually designed to empower women, or whether it simply defaults to surface-level inclusion measures that leave deeper structural inequities untouched. As governments and intergovernmental bodies race to regulate AI, the dominant policy response to gender inequality has been representational: get more women into tech, diversify hiring pipelines, seat more women at the table. This discussion asks whether that is enough, and if not, what genuine structural change in AI governance would require. This discussion will explore:

• ​Whether diversity in AI development and research teams translates into meaningful power over how AI systems are built, deployed, and governed

• ​What accountability mechanisms are missing from current gender-focused AI policy instruments

• ​What a genuinely accountable, gender-responsive AI governance framework would need to look like

​The reading group brings together UBC students from all academic levels with faculty members to engage collectively with scholarship in AI policy. No prior technical background in AI or policy is required.

​Dr. Scott Anderson is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia, where his research sits at the intersection of ethics, social and political philosophy, and the philosophy of sex, gender, and feminism. His work investigates how power, coercion, and social norms operate across interpersonal and institutional contexts, with a substantial body of publications examining these dynamics in the domain of gender relations.