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Paper short abstract

The use AI is mainly targeted to large Western, often male-operated, farms. This may deepen gender inequality, disadvantaging female smallholders in the Global South. This presentation proposes a feminist, intersectional approach to make AI in agri-food more just and context-sensitive.

Paper long abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to be mainly deployed on large, Western, monocultural farms (Ryan, 2020), which tend to be owned and operated by men. This may therefore result in a gendered inequality between large, wealthy farmers in the Global North (primarily men) and poorer, smallholder farmers in the Global South (primarily women). This may disadvantage women in the Global South and push them out of the sector, harming diversity and inclusion.

While some research has been done on the impacts of AI on gender in food systems, it mainly focuses on justice and fairness, costs, labour, and power asymmetries (Ryan and Rijswijk, 2026). Most articles, however, overlook the structural issues underlying women’s capabilities, their financial means to access AI, and contextual factors such as local norms, kinship, and social relations. Contextual factors determine levels and forms of inclusion and exclusion, and concern aspects linked to access, design and the broader system complexity in which people, digital technologies and the physical environment are connected. Furthermore, little attention is paid to actually addressing these gender-related issues.

This presentation develops a feminist approach that responds to these issues and that supports collective action towards more accessibility, more inclusive technological design, and helps to navigate system complexity. By applying feminist theoretical approaches (e.g., Iris Marion Young, Martha Nussbaum, Nancy Fraser, and bell hooks) to structural injustices, this presentation will propose steps beyond techno-centric and Western paradigms to embrace an intersectional, just, and context-sensitive approach to AI development and use in the agri-food sector.