AI and Anti-Feminist Backlash

Abstract Anti-feminist backlash has become a major concern in the international rights-based paradigm due to the rise of global anti-feminist movements in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Although anti-feminist backlash began to develop as a collective resistance or misogynist political movement against the popularity of the feminist movement in United States in the 1960s, it has significantly increased in recent years. From the United States, where long-established women’s reproductive rights are under threat, to Turkey, which has withdrawn from the Istanbul Convention in combating gender-based violence, and Afghanistan, where the Taliban is systematically conditioning women’s basic human rights, women’s hard-won political gains are increasingly the target of populist political and social ideologies. Given the growing and organized opposition to women’s rights and gender equality, manifested through various political and social strategies, it is imperative to closely examine the evolving dynamics that might undermine feminist achievements in the future. With the rise and mainstreaming of AI in everyday technologies since the 2010s, anti-feminist backlash is now encountering an ambivalent complex powerful force that holds the enormous potential either to reinforce or resist anti-feminist resistance, depending on how it is deployed and designed. This article provides a conceptual understanding of the relationship between AI and anti-feminist backlash, drawing on a feminist approach to technology. An in-depth understanding of how AI could be employed to pursue anti-feminist backlash could assist justice-oriented, ethics-based AI designs and governance in the future.