Dismantling Domination in Technology with Paola Ricaurte Quijano
Jun 06, 2024Season 2Episode 6
Cherri Jacobs Pruitt with Riane Eisler
In this episode of the Power of Partnership podcast, Paola Ricaurte Quijano, associate professor at Tecnológico de Monterrey and faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, discusses the intersection of technology, social causes, and politics, framed through Dr. Riane Eisler's four cornerstones of child and family relations, gender issues, economics, and narratives and stories.
In this episode of the Power of Partnership podcast, Paola Ricaurte Quijano, associate professor at Tecnológico de Monterrey and faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, discusses the intersection of technology, social causes, and politics, framed through Dr. Riane Eisler's four cornerstones of child and family relations, gender issues, economics, and narratives and stories.
Welcome to the Power of Partnership podcast. Welcome to the Power of Partnership podcast. I'm Rianne Eisler, president of the Center for Partnership Systems. This podcast brings you voices from the partnership movement People using partnership practices to build a world that values caring nature and shared prosperity. The Power of Partnership podcast is hosted by Cherry Jacobs-Pruitt, a health policy and partnership scholar.
Cherri Jacobs Pruitt:
And now on to the Power of Partnership podcast series, and on behalf of the entire Center for Partnership Systems team, we are so honored you're able to join us here for this interview. So, paola, you are an associate professor at the Department of Media and Digital Culture at Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico and a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. You're also co-founder of Tierra Comun, a network of academics, practitioners and activists interested in data decolonization, and you coordinate the Latin American and Caribbean hub of the Feminist Artificial Intelligence Network. So, of course, a key aspect of all this work relates to the connection between technologies such as social media and artificial intelligence and social causes and politics.
Cherri Jacobs Pruitt:
I wonder if we can start dissecting some concrete examples of these connections by using the four cornerstones that Dr Rian Eisler has identified and provided for us, that really serve as the levers to help us move away from the domination end of the social lens continuum, that is, one towards, you know, that reinforces violence and injustice, and instead help us shift more towards the partnership end of that continuum that reinforces peace and egalitarian structures. You know, those four intersecting cornerstones that she describes are child and family relations, gender issues, economics, and then, of course, the narratives and stories. So can you speak a bit about the issues related to technologies? Let's take the cornerstone of gender issues.
Paola Ricuarte Quijano:
Yes, sure, thank you very much, sherry.
Paola Ricuarte Quijano:
Thank you very much for the invitation and for this opportunity to engage in this conversation, speaking about how relationships are shaped by technology and how these relationships shape every aspect of our social life.
Paola Ricuarte Quijano:
So when we speak about gender issues, we can think of any of the aspects related to gender discrimination, gender exclusion that we have been experiencing historically and we can think, of course, how technology can exacerbate those historical forms of exclusion. And, for example, the UNESCO had a report, published, a report where it highlights the gender disparities and how women in the workforce are paid less, how women hold fewer positions, positions, decision-making positions how women participate less in STEM fields. The share of female workers in data and AI globally is about 32% and if we go like deeper, in specific technologies like cloud computing, it drops to 40%. So we need to take action to change, for example, how women are supposed to relate to technology again and also how women can be not only users but also developers of technology and also communities. We need to foster and also provide the conditions for communities to develop the technologies they need if we want to change the power asymmetries that are present now in the current technological development model.
Cherri Jacobs Pruitt:
Nice in the current technological development model, Nice. So can you give some concrete examples, for instance in your work with the Feminist Artificial Intelligence Network? Can you share with us what some of the priority areas you all are working on?
Paola Ricuarte Quijano:
Yeah, absolutely Well. For me, the Feminist AI Research Network and the project that is related to that network, which is the Incubating Feminist AI Project that are led by women here in Latin America and the Caribbean precisely because we have other projects in other regions of the Gold South, but here in Latin America we have like 16 teams that have been working to develop their own technologies aimed to foster social change, to help women to achieve, for example, access to justice or, for example, to show how some technologies are biased, not only gender biased or racially biased, but also how technologies, for example, reproduce certain stereotypes about what women are or what women should do. So for me, this is really an example of how, if we create appropriate conditions for women to flourish, to develop their own technologies, they absolutely are capable to foster social change and achieve better conditions, not only for them, but for society at large.