An Analysis of Gender Equality and the Protection of Women's Employment Rights in the Algorithmic Age

Abstract

The widespread deployment of algorithmic automated decision-making, while enhancing work efficiency, risks systematically replicating and exacerbating gender discrimination under the guise of technological neutrality, thereby posing a systemic challenge to conventional anti-discrimination legal frameworks. The nearly seven-decade jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union, progressing from the prohibition of direct discrimination to the recognition of indirect and intersectional discrimination, offers an effects-oriented analytical paradigm that is equally applicable to algorithmic contexts. The novel employment relationships engendered by algorithms expose the inadequacy of traditional models of labour protection, and doctrines such as the German “employee-like persons” and China’s “incomplete labour relations” attempt to bridge the resulting legal gaps; yet female workers remain trapped in a structural predicament characterised by concealment, immense evidentiary burdens, and ambiguous attribution of liability. Algorithmic gender discrimination, exhibiting characteristics of mediation, scale, and intersectionality, can be categorised into replicative, interactive, and correlational-crossover types, with its generative mechanisms deeply embedded in the interplay between technical and social systems. An effective response therefore demands the construction of a multi-level, full-cycle governance framework that integrates front-end prevention centred on clear legal definitions and technical standards, mid-end control through platform rules and continuous auditing, and back-end remedy underpinned by innovative judicial mechanisms such as the shifting of the burden of proof and collective litigation. Ultimately, only by forging a synergy among law, technology, and industry governance, and by ensuring women’s substantive participation throughout the full life cycle of algorithms, can the foundational value of equal pay for equal work, enshrined since the Treaty of Rome, be truly realised in the age of artificial intelligence.