Artificial Intelligence and Gender Equality: A Systematic Mapping Study

Sustainability is not only understood as a manner to safeguard the environment, but also to fight against injustices and inequalities that exist on social and economic level. One of the biggest challenges that exists in social sustainability is to achieve gender equality, as defended by the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5 of the 2030 Agenda. But this is a complex challenge and must be addressed from different spheres and fields of knowledge. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has proven to be an essential asset in the development of new and innovative technologies. Its development, adoption, and constant use by a growing part of the world’s population demonstrates the social impact it entails and the importance of also becoming an asset for social sustainability and, in this case especially, for gender equality. That is why this study aims to collect the current knowledge about the fields of AI and gender equality, through the development of a Systematic Mapping Study (SMS) that identifies the most significant advances in this regard, as well as the main gaps that must be covered. The results and findings obtained in this work show the novelty of joint analysis of both areas, as well as increasing attention they have received in recent years. Likewise, they also demonstrate the need to address specific and urgent issues within gender equality, both in the field of AI and caused by its development.