Artificial intelligence is advancing even faster than many people think. In three years, the world has gone from boring experiments with OpenAI’s ChatGPT to entire enterprises integrating Anthropic’s Claude Code into their workflows. The speed at which AI is advancing, both technologically and culturally, has surprised many – Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned in a 20,000-word essay in January that society could experience devastating effects within a year or two.
But experts warn that this fast-paced technological change is leaving an important group of women behind.
Jobs held by women are three times more likely to be automated by AI. Despite this fact, women are on average 25% less likely to use AI than men. This contradiction is compounded by the fact that women are underrepresented in AI leadership and development, even though some of the companies with the most advanced AI adoption are led by women.
Women are hesitant to use AI
Mara Boris, a workplace AI adoption strategist, said keeping women out of key technology transitions could have long-term economic consequences, warning that the problem was not in women’s ability to use technology, but in their willingness.
“This is not a lack of ability,” Boris said. luck. “This is an insight into how we want our economy and society to evolve.”
“I’m really concerned that if we don’t engage women more actively and really respect the unique skills and expertise they bring to the field, skills that are so important for AI to evolve safely and equitably, we risk creating a two-tier AI economy,” Boris said.
Boris believes hesitance is the wise response to AI hype. After working as an economic analyst at the New York Federal Reserve, Boris spent 11 years working on women’s economic empowerment at Oxfam. While completing her fellowship at Harvard Kennedy School in 2023, she noticed how gender was missing from the conversation around AI policy. She founded First Prompt, a comprehensive AI adoption lab that advises companies around the world on how to address and prevent unfair AI adoption.
Researchers from Stanford University, Harvard University, and the University of California, Berkeley found that women are less familiar with using AI tools and are less likely to stick with the technology when using them. They are more likely to care about the ethical implications of AI and how it will impact their work and lives.
Women are also less convinced about the benefits of AI, according to Beatrice Magistro and Sophie Bowin, assistant professors of political science at Northeastern University and the University of British Columbia. The two investigated how women’s risk aversion influences their skepticism about the economic benefits of AI.
Whether their work is highly complementary to AI or at risk of automation, women still perceive technology as riskier than men, Bowine said.
And there is good reason for such caution. Because women are at greater risk of being penalized for using AI in the workplace. A Harvard Business Review study found that female engineers are penalized more heavily than their otherwise identical male colleagues for performing the same AI-assisted tasks and are seen as less competent.
Women’s jobs will bear the brunt of AI disruption
A Brookings analysis found that of the 6.1 million workers whose jobs are most likely to be disrupted by AI and least likely to adapt, 86% are women. These are roles such as administrative assistant, receptionist, clerk, and legal clerk, which are positions often held by older women. Brookings found that men in jobs exposed to AI are more likely to change jobs, while women are most likely to leave the labor market altogether rather than find a new job.
“These kinds of jobs are really good, middle-class jobs. They’re well-paid jobs, they’re white-collar jobs, but they’re going to disappear,” Boris said. “Unless we intentionally focus on creating policies and programs that will help them navigate this change, they will fall into lower-paying, less secure jobs as the sector as a whole declines.”
While the gender gap in the use of AI still exists, it appears to be closing. In 2018, only 12% of machine learning engineers were women. wired Reported. Currently, 30.5% of AI experts are women, researchers at Stanford University found.
A September 2025 OpenAI report that analyzed 1.5 million conversations found that the gap between users with male and female names is narrowing. In January 2024, the company reported that 37% of its users had stereotypically feminine names. By July 2025, that percentage had risen to 52%.
Boris said women were in a position to find gaps with AI because they did not build this system. She advocates for people to approach technology with “intense ambivalence.”
“People think [ambivalence] means don’t care, which makes no sense at all. “It means holding different attitudes at the same time, which I think is very uncomfortable for people. We need to use AI to empower ourselves and others, while at the same time holding the creators of this technology and those setting policy and governance to the highest possible standards to ensure that these technologies are deployed in a safe, efficient and fair way,” she said.
According to Magistro and Bowine’s research, both women and men support the introduction of AI if they believe the end result will be positive.
“This ambivalence is not resolved. Women can lose that ambivalence if they are convinced that the net benefit is there,” Magistro says.
