This primer offers a foundational explanation of key product equity concepts and explains the importance of product equity in a fast-paced digital world. Our primary purpose is to provide product equity practitioners with a practical platform to align their internal strategies and accelerate progress through cross-industry collaboration. It also offers a wider audience interested in building more equitable products—innovators, advocates, and others who may not yet be familiar with product equity—a place to start.
Who Should Read This
- Product teams within tech companies that are directly responsible for product development
- Current and aspiring product equity practitioners
- Stakeholders in equity-centered functions such as Product Fairness, Responsible AI, Accessibility, and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)
- Teams in product-adjacent domains such as Policy, Legal, Trust & Safety, and Marketing
- External stakeholders involved in shaping the discourse around product equity including civil society organizations, academics and researchers, and policy influencers.
What Is Product Equity?
While product equity is still a nascent practice and lacks an agreed-upon definition, it generally refers to the intentional design and development of digital products to ensure inclusive and equitable outcomes for everyone using the product by taking into account their background, identity, and lived experiences.
It involves proactively identifying and addressing disparities that may arise from biases in data, algorithms, design processes or from the product teams themselves. Importantly, product equity is not only about avoiding harm and mitigating exclusion but also about creating positive impacts and greater opportunities for systemically marginalized and underserved communities.
