Digital enterprise technologies: Do enterprise control and automation technologies reinforce gender biases and marginalisation?

This research asks if digital automation systems reinforce gender discrimination through the design and development of systems that marginalise and exclude genders other than the socially constructed binary sex/gender combinations, female/woman and male/man. An online survey questionnaire and a virtual focus group was used to carry out this research. The findings suggest that digital data systems reinforce gender bias and act as a vehicle for social violence towards marginalised communities. The study has implications for our understanding of the relationship between emerging digital technologies and culture and for engineering ethics. It confirms the findings of other studies which have shown how digital automation and control systems embody the deep values and assumptions of the development community from which they emerge. This paper contributes to the IFAC discourse on diversity and inclusion and structural marginalization in science and engineering.