From the Margins to the Centre: Caribbean Women as Leaders in AI Governance

Caribbean women are the population most likely to be harmed by unregulated AI. They are also the population best placed to build fairer AI governance, once the institutional barriers to their participation are taken down on purpose. The communities most thoroughly shut out of the design and governance of AI systems are the same communities whose exclusion shows up plainly in those systems' outputs. Bringing them into governance is an equity measure and a quality improvement at the same time.

The Argument from Expertise

Caribbean women's inclusion in AI governance is a technical quality requirement, not merely a fairness preference. AI governance requires several types of expertise that Caribbean women disproportionately possess.

The first is expertise in how AI systems fail marginalised communities. This expertise comes from direct experience: from being denied services by automated systems that were not designed with your circumstances in mind.

The second is expertise in the social systems AI is being asked to replicate or improve. A woman who has moved through Jamaica's public health system as a patient, a carer, and a community health advocate knows things about how that system actually functions that are essential for designing AI tools that will serve rather than harm.

The third is expertise in intersecting disadvantage. Caribbean women who face overlapping barriers of gender, race, class, and geography possess a sophisticated understanding of how multiple disadvantages interact and compound each other. AI governance frameworks need exactly this understanding to design systems that do not replicate those compounding disadvantages at scale.

The Evidence of Harm That Makes This Urgent

The EU AI Act's high-risk AI obligations are approaching full implementation in August 2026. The systems classified as high-risk under Annex III, including AI in recruitment, healthcare, education, and social protection, are already deployed or in procurement across Caribbean markets. The compliance frameworks that would apply to their use in Europe do not apply to their use in the Caribbean.

The UN High-level Advisory Body on AI's final report, "Governing AI for Humanity", published in September 2024, explicitly calls for developing country representation in AI governance and for governance frameworks that centre equity.

What the Institutional Barriers Actually Look Like

The composition of technology advisory bodies and digital economy task forces in Caribbean governments skews heavily towards technologists, economists, and senior civil servants. Gender expertise, community advocacy expertise, and lived experience of marginalisation are systematically underrepresented.

The timing and format of governance processes disadvantages women with care responsibilities. Advisory committee meetings scheduled at short notice during school hours, international AI governance meetings that require extended travel, and consultation processes conducted through written submissions all create participation barriers that fall disproportionately on women.

The language and framing of AI governance discussions creates another barrier. Technical AI discourse uses terminology that presupposes familiarity with computer science and engineering. Women with legal, public health, education, community development, and social science expertise are treated as non-experts because they do not speak in the dialect of machine learning research. This is a category error that impoverishes governance.

The Caribbean Advantage: Small Scale, High Potential

There is a structural advantage to Caribbean AI governance that is almost never discussed: the region's small scale is a genuine asset for participatory, representative governance. In Jamaica, a country of approximately three million people, the policy community is small enough that government ministers genuinely know the country's leading researchers, civil society leaders, and practitioners across multiple domains.

The choice to convene technology advisory bodies that do not include gender experts, legal scholars, public health specialists, and community advocates is a choice. Reversing it is a choice of equivalent simplicity, though it requires political will that the region's AI governance bodies have not yet consistently demonstrated.

The International Moment and Caribbean Positioning

The EU AI Act's approaching high-risk obligations, due for full implementation in August 2026, create a specific opportunity. European AI vendors seeking Caribbean market access will face increasing pressure to demonstrate that their equity compliance extends beyond European diversity standards. A Caribbean AI governance framework that sets equity requirements for market access gives Caribbean governments real bargaining power in procurement negotiations.

The CEDAW framework, to which all CARICOM states are parties, provides an underutilised international accountability mechanism. Caribbean states that exclude women from AI governance bodies and fail to fund mechanisms for women's meaningful participation may be in breach of their CEDAW obligations.

Recommendations

1. Establish mandatory gender parity requirements for all government AI advisory bodies. Every national AI advisory committee in CARICOM member states should be required to achieve gender parity in membership. Gender parity should be defined to include women with diverse professional backgrounds, not only women from technology fields.
2. Fund a Caribbean Women in AI Governance Fellowship programme. A regional fellowship programme, administered jointly by the University of the West Indies and a regional body such as the OECS Commission, should place women with relevant expertise in AI governance roles for 12-month periods.
3. Reform governance participation structures to remove practical barriers. All Caribbean government AI governance bodies should adopt participation standards that include flexible meeting schedules, full reimbursement of participation costs including childcare, and plain-language governance documentation accessible to non-technical participants.
4. Commission a Caribbean women's AI leadership audit from the University of the West Indies. UWI, in partnership with UN Women Caribbean, should conduct a systematic audit of women's representation in AI governance roles across CARICOM.
5. Use CEDAW periodic reviews as an AI governance accountability mechanism. Caribbean states due for CEDAW periodic reviews should include a substantive section on women's participation in AI governance and on AI-related gender discrimination risks.
6. Create a Caribbean Women's AI Governance Network with institutional support. A formal network connecting women working on AI governance across the CARICOM region, supported by the CARICOM Secretariat and hosted by UWI, would build the peer connections and collective advocacy capacity that individual women in governance roles currently lack.

Conclusion

AI governance without Caribbean women's expertise, perspective, and leadership will produce inferior outcomes, not only for Caribbean women but for Caribbean societies as a whole. Systems designed without the input of the communities they affect most will serve those communities least effectively.

The AI governance frameworks that Caribbean societies build in the next three years will shape how AI affects the region for the next thirty. Building those frameworks without Caribbean women at the centre is not a neutral technical choice. It is a political decision with predictable consequences, and those consequences will be paid most dearly by the women who were excluded from making it.

About the Author

Dr. Shirley Budall is a Caribbean expert in gender, inclusion, and AI governance with demonstrated experience in the ethical, legal, social and governance dimensions of artificial intelligence and digital technologies. Contact: insights@starapple.ai