The IT Pro Podcast: Bridging the gender data gap
Biases in data sets are a major hurdle to developing effective products and services. How can we fix the problem?

When it comes to gender gaps, most people are familiar with the problem of recruiting women into technology, science, engineering and manufacturing roles, to say nothing of pay disparity and lack of representation at senior management levels.
A less well known problem, however, is the gender data gap. Biased data sets fed into artificial intelligence and machine learning systems can disadvantage women in areas ranging from recruitment to healthcare and even financial services. It’s also a problem at the other end of the funnel, with organisations losing out on potential talent, customers and risking red faces if the imbalance in the data sets used to make these decisions is made public.
This week, we’re joined by Constanza Di Gennaro, COO of BioBeats to discuss what the gender data gap is, its impact and what we can do to close it.
We also discuss Google’s new deal to provide cloud services to the UK government, Zoom’s growing revenue streams and continued security concerns, and plans to protect UK startups from takeovers by foreign companies.
Footnotes
News
- UK government to protect tech firms from foreign takeovers
- Google Cloud signs deal with the UK government
- Zoom capitalises on high demand with 169% revenue surge
- Zoom will offer stronger encryption for paid accounts
In-depth
- Female software devs 'earn more than men until promotion', report finds
- Can data beat the gender pay gap?
- The IT Pro Podcast: Can AI ever be ethical?
- How to spot – if not fix – algorithmic bias
- AI framework to prevent sexist and racist algorithms
- IBM to snuff out AI bias with updated Watson OpenScale
- Can you trust AI?
- Automating the end of discrimination
- UK police warn of bias in AI tools
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