---
title: "Fairness gerrymandering"
description: "The failure in which a model satisfies a fairness constraint on each predefined group but violates it on subgroups defined by combinations of attributes; the reason intersectional testing is needed."
canonical: https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/fairness-gerrymandering
author: "Jorge García Aibar"
license: "CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)"
doi: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22956197
version: "0.5.0"
updated: 2026-09-24
---

# Fairness gerrymandering

The failure in which a model satisfies a fairness constraint on each predefined group but violates it on subgroups defined by combinations of attributes [1]; the reason intersectional testing is needed.

- Developed in: [ch. 16, Intersectional and subgroup testing](https://aigovernanceengineer.com/bok/fairness-and-explainability#intersectional-and-subgroup-testing)
- Chapters: [ch. 16, Fairness & XAI](https://aigovernanceengineer.com/bok/fairness-and-explainability)
- In the glossary chapter: https://aigovernanceengineer.com/bok/glossary#t-fairness-gerrymandering

## Sources

[1] "Preventing Fairness Gerrymandering: Auditing and Learning for Subgroup Fairness" (Kearns, Neel, Roth and Wu; arXiv 1711.05144). arXiv. 2017-11-14. https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.05144 (verified: primary)