# Multimodal Sexism Identification and Characterization using Large Language Models and Gradient Boosting

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.05997 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.05997/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 14 of its 51 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 4 Jun 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 14 of 14)

- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.10084/) (2019)
- [BLIP: Bootstrapping Language-Image Pre-training for Unified Vision-Language Understanding and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.12086/) (2022)
- [Robust Speech Recognition via Large-Scale Weak Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04356/) (2022)
- [Unsupervised Cross-lingual Representation Learning at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.02116/) (2019)
- [Optuna: A Next-generation Hyperparameter Optimization Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.10902/) (2019)
- [The Hateful Memes Challenge: Detecting Hate Speech in Multimodal Memes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.04790/) (2020)
- [Dealing with Disagreements: Looking Beyond the Majority Vote in Subjective Annotations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.05719/) (2021)
- [MOMENTA: A Multimodal Framework for Detecting Harmful Memes and Their Targets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.05184/) (2021)
- [SemEval-2020 Task 8: Memotion Analysis -- The Visuo-Lingual Metaphor!](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.03781/) (2020)
- [LeWiDi-2025 at NLPerspectives: Third Edition of the Learning with Disagreements Shared Task](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.08460/) (2025)
- [TIB-VA at SemEval-2022 Task 5: A Multimodal Architecture for the Detection and Classification of Misogynous Memes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06299/) (2022)
- [MuSeD: A Multimodal Spanish Dataset for Sexism Detection in Social Media Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.11169/) (2025)
- [MEMEWEAVER: Inter-Meme Graph Reasoning for Sexism and Misogyny Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.08684/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present the AILS-NTUA submission to the EXIST 2026 Lab at CLEF, addressing multimodal sexism identification and characterization in memes (Task 2) and short-form videos (Task 3). Our system follows a feature-engineered late-fusion pipeline built around gradient-boosted regression models and hierarchical post-processing. For memes, we combine visual, textual, demographic, biometric, and LLM-derived semantic indicators designed to capture high-level cues such as stereotyping, objectification, irony, and misogyny. For videos, we investigate the effect of feature selection, frame-based visual representations, OCR-based textual features, acoustic descriptors, and sensor-derived metadata. Development results show that focused LLM-derived semantic cues improve meme sexism identification, while video performance is highly sensitive to feature dimensionality and cross-modal noise. For videos, development results favor compact feature selection, but official test results show that this conclusion does not fully transfer to unseen data, where the unfiltered representation generalizes better. Overall, our findings highlight the usefulness of targeted semantic feature engineering for static memes and the need for more robust temporal modeling in noisy short-form video settings.