Femnet e.V.

FEMNET - Nachrichten FEMNET-Nachrichten

03 March 2026 Make digital spaces more feminist: FEMNET sets new priorities

FEMNET e.V. expands its content work with the focus on ‘Digital Violence, Gender Bias and Data Worker’. It focuses on the impact of digital technologies on women* and other marginalised groups, both in the Global North and the Global South. The association focuses in particular on misogyny and gender-based violence in the digital space, gender-related distortions in AI systems and the working conditions of click and data workers who perform invisible but central work along the digital supply chains.

Misogyny and gender-based violence in the digital space are no longer a marginal phenomenon. studies show that women, especially politically active or visible women, are systematically harassed, threatened and degraded online, whether on social media, forums or comment columns. These attacks are not only targeted at individuals, but are designed to prevent women from speaking out publicly and help delegitimize feminist positions.

At the same time, digital technologies are reproducing and amplifying existing gender inequalities. Artificial intelligence (AI) systems learn from historically shaped, often male-dominated data sets and thus consolidate Gender bias: Job ads, credit decisions, or HR software can systematically disadvantage women because the underlying data reflects stereotypes and exclusions of marginalized groups. Bavarian Research Institute for Digital Transformation. Without feminist criticism of these conditions of origin, technology becomes the invisible enhancer of inequality.

Behind many ‘smart’ services are also invisible workers: so-called Click and Data WorkersAnnotate, moderate and control data, such as evaluating content for AI systems, filtering hate comments or tagging images and texts. This work is often poorly paid, psychologically stressful and highly gendered and unequally distributed globally; It is a new transnational Digital Supply Chain of Exploitation, the feminist trade union and human rights policy has so far been insufficiently considered.

Against this background, FEMNET e.V. wants to focus more on these topics and investigate how misogynic structures emerge on the net, spread and affect women and marginalized groups. In addition, it will be analyzed how gender bias arises in AI systems and which power relations are reflected in them. Finally, it is about how work ‑, power ‑ and exploitation relations in the digital supply chain can be made visible from a feminist perspective and addressed politically. A feminist view of the digital space means not only wrestling with individual ‘hate comments’, but questioning the underlying power structures – from platform design to data economy to working conditions – and holding those responsible accountable.