Introduction
The term “gender sensitivity” is frequently used in gender studies and reports addressing its intersections with various social and professional life domains. Definitions of the term vary significantly, ranging from broad definitions to more specific ones within the context of efforts to combat gender-based discrimination and promote gender justice and equality.
Most of these definitions fall within a theoretical framework, presenting gender sensitivity as an individual or collective awareness of gender and its social implications in everyday life. However, many reports that explore the intersection of gender with different productive fields consider gender sensitivity a fundamental element for enabling production processes to be gender-responsive. What is often missing from these discussions is a clear methodology for applying gender sensitivity in a practical way that would allow it to play this intended role.
This paper adopts a more practical definition of gender sensitivity. It advances the hypothesis that the concept can be operationalized to address an existing gap in current efforts to develop and manage digital products and services in a way that supports gender justice and equality.
Numerous studies and reports have illuminated the various dynamics and gender dimensions of digital products and services. Evidence indicates the role of many such products and services in the proliferation of negative phenomena such as gender-based hate speech, online gender-based violence, and the reproduction of gender stereotypes. Yet, the proposed solutions are often inadequate, either focusing on the retroactive treatment of these negative effects or offering overly general recommendations about what should be considered during production to avoid such outcomes.
In contrast, this paper proposes a framework for transforming gender sensitivity into a detailed, actionable methodology integrable into the various stages of the digital product and service lifecycle. It offers a practical definition of gender sensitivity, emphasizing its importance, necessity, and mechanisms for its implementation. The paper also discusses gender sensitivity within digital technology and proposes two approaches for its integration into the lifecycle of digital products and services.
What Is Gender Sensitivity, and Why Is It Important?
Gender sensitivity is defined as “an awareness of how people think about gender, implying a reduced reliance on assumptions rooted in outdated traditional views of women’s and men’s roles.” It also encompasses “the ability to observe and highlight gender differences, issues, and inequalities, and to integrate these into strategies and actions.”
Fundamentally, gender sensitivity involves observation, perception, and understanding. Consequently, it represents a form of awareness regarding the nature of gender and its societal function. Furthermore, it reflects a recognition of gender as a significant form of discrimination that divides society into two groups, leading to the violation of one group’s rights and resulting in several forms of suffering for women and girls.
Why Is Gender Sensitivity Necessary?
Gender discrimination is not merely a superficial layer of ideas and biases influencing human societies to produce various phenomena. Instead, it is a fundamental structure around which these societies have formed, perhaps from their inception. Consequently, a gender dimension permeates all aspects of daily human life.
This dimension often becomes obscured by layers of ingrained habit, making it exceptionally difficult to observe. This frequent failure to recognize the gender dimension in many aspects of life allows for the perpetuation and continuation of gender discrimination, hindering progress toward equality and justice for half of society.
Gender sensitivity is the essential means to address this recurring failure to observe and understand how gender discrimination operates. It is therefore a crucial tool for advancing the effort to confront gender discrimination. As long as the deeply embedded forms of gender discrimination within daily practices remain invisible, they cannot be challenged and eliminated. This invisibility allows these forms to continually reproduce gender discrimination, persistently eroding any prior gains made in achieving gender justice and equality.
In numerous critical issues revealing women’s suffering globally, neglecting the gender discrimination dimension impedes progress in addressing these problems and can undermine previous achievements. For instance, achieving criminal justice in harassment and rape cases worldwide remains obstructed by the lack of gender sensitivity in investigation and trial procedures.
Furthermore, the United States Supreme Court recently overturned the recognition of abortion rights, leading to its recriminalization in several states. This decision resulted from framing abortion solely as an issue of infringing on life, completely disregarding the associated gender dimension. These and countless other examples underscore the critical importance of integrating gender sensitivity into all facets of life and human activities as a prerequisite for advancing towards gender justice and equality.
Key Features of Gender Sensitivity
Gender sensitivity can be applied to all forms of human interaction and across all social and professional spheres. It is relevant within the family, in educational and work environments, and professional practices such as healthcare, engineering, and law.
Similarly, gender sensitivity is pertinent to the design, development, production, publication, operation, monitoring, and evaluation of digital products and services—the focus of this paper. It is important to note that gender sensitivity possesses key features applicable across any domain in which it functions. The subsequent section will discuss these features generally, while a later section will illustrate their application within the context of digital technology.
Levels of Gender Sensitivity in Practice
Gender sensitivity operates at three primary levels:
The Necessity of Always Considering Gender, Without Exception
This foundational level is the essential starting point for integrating gender sensitivity into any area of human interaction and activity. It rests on the simple truth that no human activity is without a gender dimension. While seemingly obvious, its significance lies in practical application.
Believing an activity to be inherently gender-neutral or considering a life domain exclusive to one gender both represent a failure to account for gender. Such perceptions invariably stem from societal norms and conventions, which perpetuate gender discrimination by either completely obscuring it or by asserting it simplistically. Consequently, gender is disregarded in both scenarios: either by claiming its irrelevance or by assuming its fixed nature.
Avoiding the perpetuation of gender stereotypes:
At this level, gender sensitivity involves recognizing and actively preventing how an activity can reinforce traditional gender stereotypes. This level is particularly challenging, as most gender stereotypes are deeply ingrained and often unnoticed.
In many cases, even seemingly positive aspects can inadvertently reproduce gender stereotypes. In particular, attempts to “consider gender”—as emphasized in the first level of gender sensitivity—can fall into this trap when they rely on conventional notions of gender differences. When such efforts are guided by traditional assumptions rather than critical reflection, they risk reinforcing the very stereotypes they aim to address.
Proactively supporting gender equality:
Opportunities to operate at this level are context-dependent. It involves providing targeted support and assistance to redress existing gender discrimination. For example, this involves identifying ways to support women to ensure they have equal opportunities to men in a given field.
Mechanisms for Implementing Gender Sensitivity
Gender sensitivity is not a fixed set of procedures applicable to every aspect of life. Therefore, integrating gender sensitivity into any field does not involve simply creating a checklist of actions.
Fundamentally, gender sensitivity relies on the awareness and understanding of the individuals performing a task or function. Its integration is the responsibility of these individuals. To foster and encourage the inclusion of gender sensitivity in any area of human interaction, the focus should be on empowering individuals to incorporate it into their own work.
This paper proposes shifting from prescriptive action lists to question-based frameworks. This involves a set of questions that individuals or teams should consider during their daily work. These questions aim to stimulate and direct their awareness and understanding of the gender dimension inherent in their tasks. The outcomes of their answers will depend on the specific nature of their field and assigned responsibilities.
Answering these questions goes beyond mere theoretical reflection. Depending on the context, it may require further research or specific actions. These actions could include gathering data through surveys, conducting practical experiments, or consulting specialized external experts.
Gender Sensitivity in Digital Technology
Two primary factors shape how gender sensitivity is addressed within digital technology:
First, digital technology has now permeated virtually all areas of human activity. Considering that gender is also inherently present in all aspects of life, the intersection of gender sensitivity and digital technology is undeniably vast.
Second, digital technology has reshaped patterns of human interaction and engagement with daily activities. Consequently, digital technology has often redefined the gender dimension within various life domains it has influenced, and to varying extents.
The Use Case Scenario Approach
The broad intersection of gender sensitivity with digital technology applications can make it challenging to identify the most critical and influential points that warrant attention. Therefore, an approach is needed to effectively identify these points without excessive time investment.
Many approaches begin by focusing on one or more characteristics of the digital product or service. For instance, an approach might classify a product as either a software application or a service. Another might categorize it by its domain, such as office or entertainment applications, or services related to health, education, general culture, or news.
In practice, there are numerous ways to classify digital products and services. However, these classification methods often lack a clear link to the gender dimension and do not provide a unified approach applicable to diverse products and services.
In contrast, this paper proposes an approach that starts by tracing the potential user’s direct or indirect interaction scenarios with the digital product or service. This approach is distinct because it begins with the potential user, thereby introducing the gender dimension from the outset.
It is essential to consider the user’s gender from the beginning. This approach is applicable to any digital product or service, as there is always a user who will either directly interact with it or be affected by its operation. By mapping out different user interaction scenarios, this approach helps identify points at which gender may become a relevant and influential factor that should be considered.
The Empowerment and Options Approach
Digital technology’s role in reshaping the gender dimension of daily activities necessitates focusing on how its applications differ from earlier forms in performing tasks and the novel phenomena that arise as a result.
A prime example is digital technology’s creation of the entirely virtual realm of cyberspace. Increasingly, individuals spend significant time in this virtual world, perhaps exceeding their time in the physical world. It’s crucial to recognize that digital products and services underpin this virtual environment and govern the experiences of its inhabitants.
Conversely, cyberspace’s nature leads to an immeasurable number of potential user experience scenarios. While common operations like creating social media accounts or setting video platform preferences can be tracked, the possible interactions among users in cyberspace are virtually limitless and often unimaginable beforehand.
Digital products and services forming cyberspace require a supplementary approach to the use case scenario method. This approach centers on the interaction tools available to users and the possibilities they unlock. Although the forms of interaction among millions of people in a social space are boundless, any digital product or service offers a finite set of interaction tools whose potential can be observed and analyzed. The impact of these tools on how individuals express themselves, their attitudes and thoughts, and their interactions can also be examined.
This paper emphasizes the gender dimensions of these forms of expression and interaction. A key strength of this approach is its attention to how interaction tools play a significant role in shaping the lived experience of cyberspace. As such, design decisions about these tools are powerful control points where gender analysis can have far-reaching effects.
For instance, consider the options for sending private messages to another user. Some social platforms restrict this to “friends,” implying mutual acquaintance. Others extend it to “followers,” who typically know the user but are not necessarily known in return. A third option is to allow any user to send private messages, including strangers. The decision of which option to implement for this direct communication tool significantly impacts daily user experience, and these impacts invariably differ based on gender.
As another example, social media platforms offer reaction tools for posts, often as icons. Some platforms provide a single “like” option, while others offer a range of reactions like love, anger, laughter, and sadness. Still others provide an even broader selection.
With multiple icons, a greater number of interaction mechanisms arise, many with gendered dimensions. The influence of other interaction tools, such as comments and related settings like who can comment and whether replies to comments are allowed, is also significant. Each of these design options either enables or restricts potential interactions, all of which are susceptible to gendered dynamics.
These technical options affect the gender dimension because they create unequal user experiences and can facilitate specific patterns of gender-based violence or discrimination. For example, allowing private messages from strangers may disproportionately expose women to harassment or unwanted communication, potentially leading to feelings of insecurity and limiting their interaction and freedom in the digital space.
Criteria for Gender Sensitivity in Digital Technology
This section seeks to answer the following question: How can gender sensitivity be practically integrated into the development, production, and operation of digital products and services? While the subsequent sections might suggest a linear process aligned with the main stages of a digital product or service lifecycle, it is important to note that this order is purely for organizational purposes.
In reality, integrating gender sensitivity in digital technology requires viewing the stages of the product or service lifecycle as interconnected. This implies that each stage should, for the most part, consider the subsequent stages. Furthermore, a continuous feedback loop exists between the different stages, where the outcomes of one stage may necessitate revisiting decisions made in an earlier stage.
Gender Sensitivity Criteria in Design and Development
Integrating gender sensitivity into the digital product lifecycle must begin at the initial concept formulation. A developer’s first question is typically, “Who do I expect to use this product?”. The answer often involves abstract, neutral specifications, with gender considered only in specific instances.
For instance, if a team of software developers is developing a new tool for engineering design, the expected users might be identified simply as “mechanical engineers.” Conversely, creators of a new social media platform might aim for a youth and adolescent audience.
In the first case, gender seems less relevant and is often overlooked. In the second, it appears more significant, prompting developers to consider attracting young women and girls. In both scenarios, simply acknowledging gender relies on existing stereotypes. Worse, assuming a digital product is “gender-neutral” implicitly biases design decisions towards a male user.
The first step towards gender-sensitive design and initial development is to avoid assuming gender absence based on preconceptions. Instead, designers and developers should start by assuming its presence, questioning how it might influence early design choices.
This can be challenging, as overcoming ingrained assumptions isn’t easy. Consequently, questions about gender might be superficial, not genuinely impacting design decisions. In such cases, surveying potential users is crucial. Survey design should explicitly consider gender, ensuring a sufficient representation of women in the sample, and analysis should highlight gender-based response differences.
This applies to all digital products, regardless of whether designers initially perceive them as gender-neutral or as having a significant gender dimension. Generally, designers should discard preconceptions and instead use objective tools to understand the needs, requirements, and preferences of the intended user.
In this approach, gender sensitivity is integrated by ensuring balanced gender representation in data sources, whether surveys, experiments, or other methods. This addresses two levels of gender sensitivity: considering the gender dimension and avoiding gender stereotypes.
The second step involves focusing on gender-based differences in needs, requirements, and preferences revealed in the first step. Designers and developers should ensure their decisions cater to these diverse needs without prioritizing them based on the overall gender distribution of the target user group.
In other words, if the majority of users are expected to be men, their needs shouldn’t automatically outweigh or overshadow women’s needs. Addressing this imbalance, when possible, aligns with the third level of gender sensitivity: actively promoting gender equality.
Gender Sensitivity Criteria in Deployment and Operation
A digital product or service’s deployment and operation phases primarily involve marketing and user acquisition strategies. The key focus during these stages should be the message conveyed to potential users. The central question for those responsible is: How to craft a message that attracts the broadest possible range of the target audience?
Integrating gender sensitivity at this stage requires discarding preconceived notions about gender. This starts by rejecting the assumption of gender neutrality and extends to eliminating any prior assumptions about an imagined gender specificity. Consequently, the goal should not be to create a gender-neutral marketing message. Nor should it be to formulate a message aimed at attracting individuals of any gender based on stereotypical assumptions about what might appeal to them.
The product or service’s marketing message must be grounded in the outcomes of the preceding design and development phase. It should reflect how the product’s design decisions meet the diverse needs, requirements, and preferences of potential users. Successful integration of gender sensitivity in the earlier stages will significantly contribute to its success in the deployment and operation phases. In this context, the marketing message’s formulation needs to represent the rationale behind the design decisions honestly.
The next step towards gender sensitivity involves posing questions to avoid directly or indirectly incorporating gender stereotypes into the marketing message. This requires going beyond simply asking, “What does this message say about the product?”. Additional questions should include: “What does this message imply about the expected user?”. Does the message’s phrasing suggest it’s exclusively aimed at men or women, or does it address both genders equally? Does the message portray the potential user through stereotypical gender lenses (e.g., the strong man, the attractive woman)?
Asking and answering these questions is complex and challenging. Relying solely on the insights and personal experiences of those creating the marketing message is insufficient, as these experiences are invariably influenced by pre-existing assumptions and prevailing norms within their professional sphere.
To overcome this limitation, external resources are essential. These include studies on the relationship between gender and marketing, the gendered impact of marketing messages, and gender-balanced opinion polls. It’s also crucial to investigate the extent to which women might feel excluded, offended, or uncomfortable due to gendered assumptions embedded in the marketing message.
A critical aspect for those creating marketing messages in the digital age is recognizing that these messages, often entirely digital, are integral to the digital space itself. This is akin to how billboards alongside city roads are part of the urban environment experienced by residents.
In digital environments, marketing messages have a more profound impact due to the nature of personal interaction. Therefore, message designers must carefully consider the overall impression they might create in recipients. This extends beyond the message’s content about the product and target audience to encompass its broader implications, particularly its potential gender dimension.
Gender Sensitivity Criteria in Monitoring and Evaluation
Integrating gender sensitivity in monitoring and evaluation involves developing indicators, metrics, and procedures to assess how well a product or service considers the gender dimension. Success at this stage hinges on obtaining meaningful and accurate data by asking the right questions.
For instance, a product’s success is typically measured by purchase rate growth, and a service like social media platforms by user base growth and activity rates. However, these metrics don’t gauge the successful integration of gender sensitivity.
Given digital technology’s deep integration into daily life, its products and services are no longer entirely optional. Therefore, measuring gender sensitivity success solely by user growth is akin to assessing a country’s quality of life based on population growth.
Studies indicate a link between certain digital products/services and the rise of hate speech and cyber gender-based violence, suggesting shortcomings in gender sensitivity integration during development. However, these studies often lack precise measurements of these deficiencies and clear explanations of their causes.
Furthermore, these studies often focus on phenomena influenced by broad social, economic, and political factors, making it impossible to pinpoint the exact responsibility of digital product design, development, and operation. Consequently, the direct gender impact on users’ daily experiences should be monitored, based on the three levels of gender sensitivity that were previously discussed.
Monitoring and evaluation tools for digital products and services should be designed to assess their success in meeting user needs, requirements, and preferences while explicitly considering the gender dimension. Secondly, tools capable of detecting users’ exposure to gender stereotypes should be developed.
Finally, tools are needed to assess the extent to which a product or service supports women and girls, providing them with opportunities that are more balanced with those available to men. Most of these tools rely on enabling users to describe their experiences and providing mechanisms for asking pertinent questions.
Facilitating user experience descriptions doesn’t necessarily require lengthy questionnaires that many might avoid. Innovative methods can be employed to gather user impressions and feedback. Social media platforms already use such methods to gauge user reactions to recommended content, asking about its relevance and whether users want more similar content.
Therefore, the same approach can be used to ask questions about the gender dimension of content. Additionally, social media platforms allow users to report content that violates guidelines. This mechanism could include reporting content containing gender stereotypes. While penalizing such content might often be seen as infringing on free speech, giving users the option to avoid similar content is not.
How Can Gender Sensitivity be Integrated into Digital Technology?
Several fundamental requirements are necessary to ensure the integration of gender sensitivity throughout the digital product or service lifecycle. The following sections discuss these requirements and how to fulfill them.
Education and Training
Guidelines and instructions can assist those involved in developing digital products and services to incorporate gender sensitivity into their work. However, the successful integration of gender sensitivity largely depends on the awareness and understanding of gender-related aspects by those participating in the development process. This awareness and understanding can be fostered through education before entering professional work or via subsequent training opportunities.
Educational stages preparing individuals for professional careers offer a significant opportunity to equip future designers and developers with the theoretical foundations and practical training needed to integrate gender sensitivity into their fields. This opportunity should be used to provide a theoretical grounding that enables understanding of gender concepts, gender discrimination, its social impact, and the crucial role of gender stereotypes in perpetuating and reproducing gender discrimination.
It is considerably more challenging to provide such theoretical grounding after individuals have already entered professional work. It is also vital that curricula for aspiring designers and developers introduce them to the intersection of digital technology and gender, and their mutual influence. This allows students to develop the capacity to understand how digital products and services can contribute both negatively and positively to efforts towards gender justice and equality.
Together, these aspects cultivate gender sensitivity at the level of individual awareness and understanding among professionals. This, in turn, makes the inclusion of this sensitivity a natural and perhaps automatic practice in their specialized fields.
Additionally, institutions involved in designing and developing digital products and services can offer their employees specialized training programs. These programs aim to equip them with the necessary theoretical background and practical skills to integrate gender sensitivity into their work. This can help address some shortcomings in educational programs.
Furthermore, training programs have the advantage of focusing on the intersection of gender with the institution’s specific field or the tasks of particular employee sectors. This enables trainees to acquire skills directly relevant to integrating gender sensitivity into their actual work tasks. In contrast, pre-employment education typically provides a broad, theoretical understanding that lacks the task-specific relevance offered by targeted training.
Policy Making
Institutions involved in designing, developing, and operating digital products and services should establish clear policies for integrating gender sensitivity into their operations. These policies should encompass training programs for employees, ensuring they possess the necessary skills and knowledge to incorporate gender sensitivity into their work.
Policies should also include the development of guidelines and instructions on how to integrate gender sensitivity across various institutional processes. Based on these, institutions should implement supervision, monitoring, and evaluation plans and procedures to ensure actual adherence to these principles. Furthermore, the effectiveness of these guidelines should be regularly assessed, reviewed, and adjusted as needed.
Currently, adopting policies for integrating gender sensitivity is largely a voluntary decision for these institutions. For for-profit entities, this entails costs in terms of time and resources and may potentially conflict with their business models and profit generation.
Therefore, there is a need to encourage and incentivize these institutions to adopt gender-sensitive policies. Pressure, and even legal frameworks, could be employed to mandate compliance. This necessitates increased efforts from relevant civil society organizations directed towards technology companies, governments, and legislative bodies. Primarily, state policies concerning digital technology should explicitly include the integration of gender sensitivity as a key objective.
Supervision, Monitoring, and Evaluation
This section focuses on supervision, monitoring, and evaluation within the production processes themselves—the internal mechanisms by which institutions ensure the consistency and quality of their output.
Integrating gender sensitivity into production and subsequent stages necessitates clear institutional policies with accompanying internal guidelines and instructions for implementation. Supervision, monitoring, and evaluation processes are crucial for verifying the actual application of these guidelines.
However, given that gender sensitivity is primarily about awareness and understanding, ensuring its inclusion in production goes beyond mere automatic adherence to instructions. These guidelines cannot be exhaustively detailed; instead, they should guide individuals and teams towards key questions to consider during their tasks.
Supervision and evaluation should involve meetings and workshops with those carrying out production processes. These meetings allow for individual and collective discussions on how they are applying gender sensitivity guidelines in their work.
Workshops, in this context, can serve a dual purpose. Firstly, they reveal the extent to which individuals and teams understand the guidelines and are aware of the gender dimension in their specific tasks. Secondly, they provide education and training, helping to address knowledge and awareness gaps and highlighting areas potentially overlooked in the practical application of the guidelines.
Ideally, production institutions should involve gender studies specialists, either internally or through partnerships with civil society organizations, to facilitate these meetings and workshops. This enables a two-way exchange of knowledge and yields outcomes that inform the development of institutional policies related to integrating gender sensitivity into their operations.
Conclusion
Integrating gender sensitivity into the digital technology product and service lifecycle as a practical methodology can substantially advance the pursuit of gender justice and equality. This can be achieved through sufficient commitment from production institutions, especially big technology companies, or by employing various mechanisms and strategies to encourage and motivate them to adopt policies that embed gender sensitivity in their operations.
This paper has offered a practical framework for understanding gender sensitivity and translating it into actionable steps across the digital technology product and service lifecycle. The first section introduced the foundational concepts for moving gender sensitivity from theory to practice.
The second section proposed a vision for applying this framework to the development, production, operation, monitoring, and evaluation of digital technology products. Finally, the third section discussed the essential requirements for enabling the integration of gender sensitivity into the production processes of digital technology products and services.