Book IWD Speaker: Marina Sukhomlinova

Marina Sukhomlinova is the Founder and President of Womafreesm (The World Organization of Women Nations Womafreesm Inc.), an international nonprofit with 501(c)(3) public charity status in the United States. She leads the research method of Audit 45-64, an open audit of how AI systems portray, evaluate and select women aged 45 to 64. She trained as a psychologist and social pedagogue and in economics, has worked in civil society since 1997, and lives in London.

Talk: Who Does Your AI Picture? Checking Hiring Tools for Age and Gender Bias Against Women 45-64

AI assistants now help write job ads, screen CVs and build shortlists. HR teams are asked to trust them. This talk shows how to check them from the outside, without access to code. It draws on the pilot of Audit 45-64, which tested two widely used AI assistants in five countries and five languages.

Three findings matter for employers. Refusals: on shortlist ranking the systems refused far more often than on marketing tasks, and a refusal is not neutral, because it changes who gets evaluated. Age inside one group: a woman of 49 and a woman of 59 were treated in opposite directions, so a single average for ”women over 45” hides the problem. The imagined ideal: asked to describe an ideal candidate, the systems described nobody aged 55 or older, for men and women alike.

The audience leaves with a three-layer test they can run on the tools they already use: whom the system pictures, how it rates a described candidate, and whom it finally selects. The pilot makes no causal claim. The talk shows what to check, not which vendor to blame.

Other topics: women 45-64 at work; turning women’s lived experience into evidence for new rules and standards; women’s rights and legal advocacy. Languages: English, Ukrainian and Russian. Fee by agreement; for nonprofit and mission-aligned events Marina can speak without a fee if travel costs are covered.

---