Building a Territorial Working Group to Reduce Gender Gap in the Field of Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

The gender gap (both at vocational and professional sides) in Artificial Intelligence (AI), and scientific and technological fields in general, is one of the most critical challenges that the current digital society must solve. This paper describes the proposal of the gender commission donesIAcat to create a gender working group formed by Catalan AI scientists and professionals who work in a network for bridging this gap. The main objectives for letting girls know that they can study and work in the AI field are presented in this paper. A general methodological framework is proposed, following the internal organization of the Catalan group donesIAcat. Several key actions are explained and classified into six blocks. A relevant contribution of the paper is the definition of the guidelines required to build a territorial network-based structure capable of launching several AI-related activities targeting people at different stages of their life. The activities done at donesIAcat illustrate the possible outcomes of the proposed methodology and show successful initiatives to engage girls in technology and AI. The paper shows the validity of this model for small homogeneous territories where activities can be suitable for the different cities in the region. Proximity is one of the advantages of such a model and one of the reasons for its success.