Gender Mainstreaming Strategy and the Artificial Intelligence Act: Public Policies for Convergence

Abstract Gender stereotypes produced and proliferated through social interactions, media, books, arts and movies, have nowadays intruded into the design of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems, products, and services. AI algorithms and models used, are revealed to lead to misrepresentation of women and to biases and discrimination against them. The EU Regulation 2024/1689, known as the “Artificial Intelligence Act” (AI Act), officially entered into force in August 2024. This Regulation is a crucial step worldwide towards fundamental rights’ protection in the frame of AI since it acknowledges the negative impact of biases and discrimination proliferated through AI systems on peoples’ lives. Although gender equality is a fundamental right that contributes to a peaceful and prosperous world, AI Act does not cover gender equality detailed issues explicitly. To address this, as a next step, AI gender-targeted public policies should be formulated at national level, and the gender mainstreaming strategy should be further supported by the European Union member-states in the frame of the AI Act. In this paper, public policies are proposed in order to support the convergence of gender mainstreaming strategy and the forthcoming AI regulation.