Anti-discrimination Law and Digital Vulnerability Based on Gender

Abstract

Anti-discrimination law is based on principles such as equality and the dignity of the human person, expressly provided for in international texts such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights. It aims to guarantee equal treatment and protection against negative discrimination, promoting the inclusion of vulnerable groups. In the digital environment, this protection becomes even more relevant, since technology can both reduce inequalities and amplify vulnerabilities and, consequently, inequalities. Digital vulnerability refers to the unequal exposure to technological risks, which can affect the privacy, security, and exercise of fundamental rights of socially marginalized groups, such as the elderly, people with disabilities, and economically disadvantaged communities, who face greater obstacles to the safe use of technology. Furthermore, digital exclusion can perpetuate inequalities in access to information, education, and essential public services. Digital vulnerability based on gender refers to the specific inequalities and risks faced by women and people of segregated and/or marginalized gender identities in the digital environment, considering that technology has the potential to reproduce and amplify discrimination, giving rise to new forms of violence, exclusion, and inequality. In this sense, the digital environment has become a new space for the perpetuation of gender-based violence, through online harassment, digital sexual violence, misogynistic and transphobic attacks, as well as algorithms that determine discriminatory outcomes. The proposed theme aims to create a dialogue that considers public policies and regulations that promote the inclusion of these vulnerable groups, ensuring that technology becomes an instrument of inclusion and not of oppression and segregation. This article argues that digital technologies reproduce and amplify structural gender inequalities through algorithmic bias, underrepresentation, and intersectional exclusion. It concludes by proposing concrete legal and technical reforms, including mandatory gender-focused algorithmic audits, diversity obligations in AI teams, and the adoption of a European Directive on Digital Equality, to ensure substantive gender equality in digital environments.