The Technology We Need seeks to put women at the front of problem-solving at the local level around the world. A cohort of international organizations, of which Data-Pop Alliance is a proud member, is supporting this initiative which this month became an official Generation Equality Forum: Technology and Innovation Action Coalition for Gender Equality (TIGE) commitment.
The Technology We Need
<A+> Alliance for Inclusive Algorithms and Women at the Table launched the The Technology We Need project with a problem-solving approach, focused on how technology can measurably and positively impact social problems, improve quality of life, correct for historic exclusion, and address more Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The goal is to create technology and the methodology to use it across the Global South, ensuring that no one is left behind. The main idea is that we all thrive leveraging technology’s full power to positively transform lives at scale, developed by those who need it most.
The Tech We Need can be broken down into the following components and principles:
1. Women community leaders + youth leaders convene + mixed-methods methodology to define problems + solutions.
2. Working with local university partners, multi-disciplinary, multi-sectoral, multi-stakeholder local and international teams, that mobilize social scientists and technologists.
3. Needs-based, rights-based technology solutions are co-created, prototyped and piloted.
4. Women + Girl Community Leaders lead, own, design, and maintain their solution to their problem.
First sites 2021: The Technology We Need pilot was launched this year in two Latin American sites: in Erizo Juan Santamaria, Costa Rica (in partnership with Tecnológico de Costa Rica) with women and girls leaders in the settlement, and in Jalisco, Mexico (in partnership with the Tecnológico de Monterrey), which focuses on a coalition of local women workers in the tech maquila industry.
Commitment-makers
The full list of partners supporting this project and joining the Gender Equality commitment includes: Tecnológico de Monterrey; Laboratorio Experimental, Tecnológico de Costa Rica; Internet Lab, Brazil; Observatory of AI Social Impacts – UNTREF, Argentina; Data + Feminism Lab, MIT; Digital Humanities Lab, Emory University; Data-Pop Alliance; Center for Science, Technology + Society, Chulalongkorn University; Jordan Open Source Association.
Learn more about the Action Coalitions of the Gender Equality Forum clicking below.