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Digital Backlash: Manifestations & Resistance with Dr. Becky Faith
On November 5th, 2026, the Gender, MERL, and AI Learning Group at the MERL Tech CoP will welcome Dr. Becky Faith for a conversation about her new working paper, “Digital Backlash: Manifestations and Resistance”, co-authored with Antea de Jesus Gomes and Raisa Philip. Exploring how digital systems increasingly entrench and amplify gender inequalities with minimal accountability, the working paper argues that in these same systems gender justice advocates are countering the backlash, showing how it is possible to carve out and create new technological trajectories, rooted in care and inclusive futures. Situating this analysis in an era of ‘big tech authoritarianism’ marked by the merging of state and technology power, the authors delineate three interlinked shifts in socio-digital realities: the rise of ‘compulsory digitization’, the persistence of structural gender inequalities in digital access and skills, and the rapid growth of AI, which risks amplifying bias and enabling technology-facilitated gender-based violence at scale.