Reading Feminist AI From the Global South
Published:
We are starting our Co-Liberative Computing reading circle by reading three papers that examine AI ethics beyond fairness metrics and design guidelines, arguing that AI can be ethical and sustainable only if we center people, care, and justice. All three papers take a feminist perspective from the Global South, but each approaches the problem at a different level.
The first paper [1] discusses how AI functions as a global system that extracts labor, data, and natural resources from the Global South, while most of the benefits flow elsewhere. It also highlights how people in Latin America, Africa, and Asia actively reshape AI through local languages, small and frugal models, open tools, feminist projects, and community-driven uses in areas such as health, agriculture, and digital rights.
The second paper [2] focuses on who pays the price for AI, showing that African women bear a large share of the environmental and care burdens of AI, from mining and e-waste to health risks and unpaid labor, realities often ignored in mainstream AI ethics. Drawing on Feminist African Ethics and a critical reading of Ubuntu, the paper argues that AI cannot be considered truly sustainable if sustainability is reduced to emissions and e-waste while ignoring gendered care work and unequal power relations.
The third paper [3] presents an end-to-end feminist AI project from the Global South that goes beyond critiquing AI research and demonstrates that feminist AI development is practical. The paper makes visible the often hidden work behind responsible AI, including care, trust, emotional labor, ethical decision-making, and collaboration across disciplines.
An important takeaway from these papers is that feminist AI is not defined primarily by tools or principles, but by how the work is done and who is held accountable, placing strong emphasis on process rather than technical outcomes alone.
[1] Lessons from the Margins: Contextualizing, Reimagining, and Hacking Generative AI in the Global South, A. Hernández et al., Harvard Data Science Review, 2025
[2] Sustainable AI Meets Feminist African Ethics, M. Mensah et al., AI and Ethics, 2025
[3] Doing the Feminist Work in AI: Reflections from an AI Project in Latin America, M. Ciolfi Felice et al., ACM CHI, 2025
The first paper [1] discusses how AI functions as a global system that extracts labor, data, and natural resources from the Global South, while most of the benefits flow elsewhere. It also highlights how people in Latin America, Africa, and Asia actively reshape AI through local languages, small and frugal models, open tools, feminist projects, and community-driven uses in areas such as health, agriculture, and digital rights.
The second paper [2] focuses on who pays the price for AI, showing that African women bear a large share of the environmental and care burdens of AI, from mining and e-waste to health risks and unpaid labor, realities often ignored in mainstream AI ethics. Drawing on Feminist African Ethics and a critical reading of Ubuntu, the paper argues that AI cannot be considered truly sustainable if sustainability is reduced to emissions and e-waste while ignoring gendered care work and unequal power relations.
The third paper [3] presents an end-to-end feminist AI project from the Global South that goes beyond critiquing AI research and demonstrates that feminist AI development is practical. The paper makes visible the often hidden work behind responsible AI, including care, trust, emotional labor, ethical decision-making, and collaboration across disciplines.
An important takeaway from these papers is that feminist AI is not defined primarily by tools or principles, but by how the work is done and who is held accountable, placing strong emphasis on process rather than technical outcomes alone.
[1] Lessons from the Margins: Contextualizing, Reimagining, and Hacking Generative AI in the Global South, A. Hernández et al., Harvard Data Science Review, 2025
[2] Sustainable AI Meets Feminist African Ethics, M. Mensah et al., AI and Ethics, 2025
[3] Doing the Feminist Work in AI: Reflections from an AI Project in Latin America, M. Ciolfi Felice et al., ACM CHI, 2025