Gender Legislative Index Uses Machine Learning to Recognize Discriminatory Laws – AI

Gender inequality can be imbedded in discriminatory laws, and until recently there has been no way to detect gender discrimination in law.

Ramona Vijeyarasa, Human Rights Lawyer and Senior Lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney has developed the Gender Legislative Index (GLI) to combat this problem, and close the gender inequality gap across Australia.

Vijeyarasa told Digital Nation Australia, “A lot of discrimination that women face is embedded in the law. And that may be in the form of a law that discriminates, for example, against single mothers, as opposed to single mothers or a law that embeds inequality, such as Australia’s paid parental leave scheme, which defines mothers as primary carer Sharing that responsibility. ”

The GLI uses AI and machine learning to evaluate whether a law will advance or hinder women’s rights based on international women’s rights law standards.

“The Gender Legislative Index uses a machine learning algorithm to give a law an overall score, because people know what they want to do. They want to know, is this a good law? Is this a bad law? Which country performs best? But they want a way to show that it’s underpinned by integrity. And that’s what the machine learning algorithm offers, ”she said.

“The machine learning is intended for parallel human reasoning. The GLI algorithm operates as a series of ordered logical decisions based on human evaluations, which flow to a final overall score. So very much a decision tree model. ”

The unique aspect of the GLI is that its ability to treat all laws is the same, and therefore remove some of the human bias associated, she said.

Vijeyarasa used the index recently when the Australian government called for submissions for its workplace gender equality act.

“I was able to put forward the findings of the Gender Legislative Index, including the data from the Machine Learning to Say, ‘These are great provisions in law. These are also some of the factors in law that need to be changed and may be dragging it down. There’s not enough transparency or accountability. Not enough organizations are within the scope of the law to be accountable. ‘”

The GLI is set to be used again as soon as the government calls for revisions to the modern slavery act, she said.