DA few months Italy has a new strength to combat inequalities between men and women: the Italian Committee of A Womenthe United Nations Authority which operates for gender equality and female Empowerment. Private and independent foundation, the National Committee supports the mission of a Women sensitizing public opinion on gender equality and collecting private funds, to be allocated to international projects, such as the humanitarian campaigns now underway in Sudan, Myanmar, Gaza, or specific projects.
«National committees also have the aim of creating an effective relationship with the government, so that laws and invested resources are promulgated to remove obstacles to equality. Laws can accelerate cultural changes that require very long times to assert themselves: a Women is proud to have promoted in the world laws against infibulation and early girls of girls “he explains Darya Majidi, the Italian-Iranian entrepreneur who principals a Women Italy.
Artificial intelligence expert is among the most authoritative in combining technology and social commitment. Current CEO of Daxo Groupa company specialized in strategic consultancy and training on AI and Digital Transformation, and member of the industrial board of theItalian Association for Artificial Intelligenceis the founder of the 4.0 women’s association, creator of the Aixgirls, Aixwomen and Startupher projects, and author of two books on the female Empowerment through technology, 4.0 women And Digital sisterhood.
Darya Majidi, president of a Women Italy
The 69th UN Commission on women status reiterated that technology and innovation are opportunities for a more fair world. Why and how can technology fill the many still existing gaps?
A third of the world population does not have access to the Internet: of this slice, 70 percent is a woman, and this basically represents an obstacle to full citizenship. Having said that, where technology is an acquired right, every woman must be able to have autonomous access to technological tools, to draw firsthand to information, knowledge, relationships, opportunities for growth and self -determination. To do this, it is necessary to use technology in an active and conscious way, the only system with which it is possible to build training, entrepreneurship, business, social change, also denunciation. The #Metoo would not have existed without the network, like the movement Woman, life, freedom, in Iran: It was the fifteen -year -olds starting to resist by showing the world, with cell phones, the episodes of discrimination and systematic violence to which women are exhibited.
The fact remains that if technology can be decisive to achieve gender equality, it can increase gaps, even irreversiblely.
Unfortunately, women who choose to study technological subjects and who, therefore, will produce and handle technology remain a minority. In Italy, just 14 percent of those who enroll in the faculty of computer science, computer engineering or electronic are women. He worries that we continue to consider technology a field of male protagonism, given the gigantic opportunities he is generating. And moreover, the technological empowerment is a pillar of the objective 5 – that on gender equality – of the 2030 agenda for sustainable development: strengthening the use of technologies to encourage emancipation.
According to the ICILS (International Computer and Information Literacy Studio) survey, however, in digital skills the Italian thirteen years old reach a score of 500, against 482 of peers. Good news, given that studies and technological professions in our country see a strong majority of males. How did this come to this?
Females in general have brightest schools and academics than males. The fact that now these results are also expressed in the technological field does not surprise me: the tools that the very young have in their hands are computers in all respects and are used to produce content. Girls have absolute familiarity with technologies, so they learn very easily and naturally. For how I see it, they still have to perform the next step, that is to become aware of the fact that they must be the one to use technology and not, on the contrary, allow technology to serve them, since today more than ever technology seeks consumers. Teenagers are the most vulnerable.
Of that fluid oscillating between virtual and real life, what does it worry in particular?
I worry that very young and very young use the cell phone in relationships to control each other. According to research, they consider acceptable and, indeed, due, a type of invasion of privacy that was not conceivable for me even thirty years ago. Read the private messages of the partner, check where it is located through the location of the mobile phone, checking its social access are forms of abuse that are not recognized as such.
In addition to young people, on which areas a Women Italy will operate?
We will work on the theme of female work and on gender violence. And on men. In the scientific committee is the president of the Court of Milan, Fabio Roia who always recalls how gender violence must affect men: the violent are men, they too must take charge of it.
In March you launched the Heforshe project in Italy, exactly ten years after the birth of the international campaign that defines the equity of gender universal question, which concerns men and women. Who are the Italian active allies?
We recognized Advocate of Heforshe Gino Cecchettin, the teacher of demography and social statistics Alessandro Rosina, the actor Alessio Boni, Luca Fratini, coordinator of the UN Women, Peace and Security Agenda and the members of our Board of Directors Corrado Tomassini and Filippo Agnello.
The latest UN commission on women’s status reiterated that it is urgent to integrate the gender perspective in decisions inherent in the development of digital technologies, including inclusive. Why not would be damage for everyone?
Artificial intelligence systems based on machine learning (for which machines derive something new autonomously from the previously administered data, editor’s note) learn from historical data. If we train a corporate system on a database that represents the company historian, in fact, and which therefore records a small part of women in the top positions, the system learns that women are not very interested in becoming managers. The system, therefore, replies and generalizes a distortion, makes it law and on the basis of this law will make its decisions, which therefore penalize the workers who aspire to the management. The world is still full of distortions, prejudices, the data are full! If I ask an artificial intelligence to draw a successful person, without specifying the genre, he will draw a man; If I ask her to draw a successful woman, she will draw a white, thin, beautiful appearance woman. So why do we need the female perspective and, after all, a multitude of perspectives? Because in this way the artificial intelligence systems become the right and truthful. Furthermore, to allocate the distortions, artificial intelligence is an excellent ally: if we ask them to identify those of gender hidden in a system, it does so.
She approached a very young age to technology, she dealt with artificial intelligence graduating in this subject thirty years ago. Did he guess he would become so impactful?
In 1993 I had the privilege of graduating from the Department of Computer Science of the University of Pisa, which was then one of the very few universities in the world to work on artificial intelligence, thanks to the foresight of Professor Antonina Starita, whose teachings I was very passionate about. My thesis was on an artificial intelligence system that supported neurologists in the diagnosis, to understand if an electromyographic signal indicated a neurological or myogenic disease. Then the databases did not exist, the web did not exist: to get the data of a patient I had to take the car and go to Pisa, who, to Siena, and, acquired, put them on 17 floppy disk! Unfortunately, Europe has not believed in the development of artificial intelligence, it did not invest us: instead, they did it very fruitfully United States and China. In Italy it is even more complex, also due to its economic fabric, made substantially of small businesses. Our country still suffers the crucial difficulty in transforming research, which is of a very good level, into the market.
I woman © RESERVED REPRODUCTION