Media Release

New research from the Victorian Women’s Trust warns that the gendered harms of artificial intelligence are not isolated incidents but a cascading system. Women’s exclusion from AI design and governance triggers multiple, compounding harms across women’s safety, work, and political voice.

The Research Snapshot, Gender and AI: Where’s the Harm?, is the first known attempt in Australia to map gendered harms at a systems level. Led by Dr Elise Stephenson, the Victorian Women’s Trust inaugural Feminist Researcher in Residence, the research identifies 20 fundamental harms that disproportionately impact women, girls and gender diverse people from labour market disruption and deepfake abuse to reproductive surveillance and the erosion of political participation.

“Many gendered harms are already occurring, they’re not speculative. This is happening now and can’t be relegated to the future,” said Dr Stephenson, Deputy Director of the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at ANU. “When women and marginalised communities are not equally represented in AI design and governance, gendered harms are multiplied simultaneously. This is how harms are cascading and accumulating over time.”

Data from Jobs and Skills Australia has found that 15 of the 20 occupations most exposed to automation are female-dominated, while 88% of leading AI researchers globally are male. An estimated 98% of deepfake videos are pornographic — 99% of which feature women and girls.

“AI impacts women and gender diverse people’s lives in significant ways, from job losses due to automation to image-based abuse through to deepfakes,” said Dr Kirsten Abernethy, Executive Director of the Victorian Women’s Trust. “Safeguards are scarce. Right now, Australia has no binding, AI-specific legislation federally. We’re relying on a patchwork of anti-discrimination, privacy and consumer protection laws that were never designed to address algorithmically-driven harm.”

Dr Abernethy said that the findings demanded urgent government action: “We are at a crossroads and Australia is on the cusp of making policy decisions that will impact generations to come. Without gender-responsive legislation, we are putting women’s safety, autonomy, political agency and economic security at risk.”

The Victorian Women’s Trust will release a full White Paper in early 2027, examining five priority harm areas in greater detail: agency and autonomy, social and relational harms, political and democratic exclusion, accountability and governance gaps, and environmental and intergenerational impacts.

Contact → media@vwt.org.au
Learn more → Gender and AI: Where’s the Harm?

Available spokespeople:

DR ELISE STEPHENSON
Victorian Women’s Trust Inaugural Feminist Researcher in Residence, 2026

Dr Elise Stephenson is the Deputy Director of the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership, Australian National University, founded and chaired by former prime minister Julia Gillard. She is a multi-award-winning gender equality researcher who focuses on gender, sexuality and leadership in policy frontiers, from researching artificial intelligence, to the space sector, diplomacy, national security, intelligence, climate action, international relations, and the Asia Pacific. She is an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) fellow 2025-2028 for her research on: Gender Equality at the Frontiers: AI, Space and Climate Action.

She is the author of two policy briefs on feminist approaches to AI governance, with the International Women’s Development Agency, Australia, and the IE University Center for the Governance of Change, Spain. Her recently published co-authored book, Future Generations Governance, Policymaking and Leadership: Ending “Policrastination” reinforces Elise’s intersectional, intergenerational feminist approach to AI and demonstrates her keen commitment to ensuring her research is translated for policy and practice.

DR KIRSTEN ABERNETHY
Executive Director, Victorian Women’s Trust

Dr Kirsten Abernethy is a social scientist, researcher and educator with over 20 years’ experience working with coastal and seafaring communities across Australia, the UK, and the Pacific. Her work is grounded in feminist values, and her research and advocacy has been centred upon worker’s rights, looking deeply at the experiences of women, a demographic often underrepresented. Kirsten has led major research and sector-wide programs focused on women’s leadership, workplace inclusion and systemic reform. In 2017, she won the VIC AgriFutures Rural Women’s Award. In 2025, she was appointed Executive Director of the Victorian Women’s Trust.