PhD Summer School 2024: Gender, AI and Inclusive Work

New technologies are reshaping work, offering economic growth opportunities. Yet, digitalization may deepen gender disparities. Despite efforts to promote gender equality, labor markets remain gender segregated, e.g. women often in lower-paying roles.

Many experts foresee that women are more likely to be threatened by the introduction of new technologies in the workplace in the next decade. Since, women, on average, perform more routine tasks than men, a higher number of female workers can be at risk of AI-driven job displacement/technological unemployment. Meanwhile, feminised sectors such as healthcare, education and social care assistance are at lower risk of automation. These sectors are expected to grow with increasing presence of digital labour platforms that offer atypical work arrangements and contribute to the emergence of new forms of risks, such as the isolation of workers, fragmentation of work and institutionalised undervaluation of work performed by female workers.

In this summer school, we aim to explore the everyday experiences of female workers within the changing nature of work environments due to new technologies and new forms of work from by looking at the interaction between technological change, labour market institutions and gender from an intersectional/critical perspective (including a feminist economics perspective).

We invite submissions related to the topics of everyday experiences of female workers, including:

• AI/automation and gender inequality,
• women in the platform economy,
• algorithmic bias in hiring and discrimination in the workplace,
• women in the AI/data/tech driven fields,
• the ways of debiasing data and
• the role of trade unions/social partners in workers’ organising.

Prerequisites

Number of places: 16 PhD students working on the topics related to digitalisation transformation from the social science perspective. Interdisciplinary approaches are highly encouraged.

Eligibility: currently registered PhD students in Social Science/Related Disciplines.

Selection: Participants will be selected following a peer-review process and on the basis of scientific excellence of their proposed abstract. A fair balance between different regions within and Europe and topics will be maintained. A limited number of places reserved for students outside the EU.

Format of the event: On-site

Funding: All selected participants will be provided with 3 nights’ accommodation and meals during the stay.

Fee: a fee of 50 EUR to be paid to the organisers once the list of participants is announced.

Guidelines for applications

Please send a short CV (max. 3 pages) and an abstract of your paper (400 words max) by 1 May 2024.

Your abstract should contain the following subheadings:

• Title of paper
• Keywords (up to 4)
• Research question
• Theoretical framework
• Methodology (if empirical paper)
• Preliminary findings or conclusions

Applications (in a single PDF file) must be submitted to Inga Sabanova - Inga.Sabanova[at]fes.de by 1 May 2024.

What happens next

• The list of selected participants will be announced by June 15, 2024.
• If you are selected you will be required to submit a manuscript of a full paper (4000 words, excluding footnotes and bibliography) by July 15, 2024 to Inga Sabanova - Inga.Sabanova[at]fes.de
• This is essential to ensure that participants get the most of this programme. Papers will be circulated in advance and allocated to peer discussants.
• We kindly ask you to apply only if you accept these terms of conditions and are prepared to follow the guidelines and deadlines.
• The best papers will be published after the summer school.