Genevieve Smith: "Gendered Algorithms: AI Credit Scoring and the Limits of Algorithmic Financial Inclusion"
Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly reshaping the world of finance. Across low- and middle-income countries, fintech companies are deploying machine learning (ML)-based credit scoring tools to decide who receives loans and who does not. Widely promoted as neutral tools that overcome human bias and market inefficiencies, these systems target underbanked people -- the majority of whom are women -- reaching tens of millions of low-income borrowers and entrepreneurs under the banner of financial inclusion. This research makes a different claim: AI credit scoring is not simply a technical instrument. It is a social and political technology that can reproduce and legitimize gender inequality under the guise of neutrality. Grounded in feminist science and technology studies (STS) and drawing on rare empirical access to fintechs, as well as original research with borrower communities in Kenya, Gendered Algorithms traces how gender norms and economic hierarchies become encoded into these "AI for good" infrastructures.
Gender bias in fintech credit systems does not arise from malicious intent or isolated data flaws. It emerges from a narrow epistemology of neutrality -- one that treats machine learning as objective and data as truth. Fintechs routinely fail to consider how gender shapes access to and use of these technologies, or how gender-blind algorithms and profit priorities privilege male-dominated labor and economic patterns. The result: women tend to receive fewer loans and lower loan amounts, despite being observed as better repayers -- a disparity legitimized under market-oriented definitions of fairness. This research is about more than financial technology. It's about power: who gets to define creditworthiness and fairness, under what cultural logics and institutional priorities they are brought to life, and how AI might be built differently towards more equitable futures.
Genevieve Smith is the 2025-27 Clayman Institute Postdoctoral Research Fellow.
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