There’s a new gender gap in the workplace. It’s not about men commanding higher salaries or well-qualified women losing out on promotions to their male counterparts. This time, the gender gap is all about artificial intelligence.
Female workers tend to use AI tools less often than men, according to a recent analysis from the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University. Women also say they have comparatively less access to AI training, mentorship and other workplace support that would enable and empower them to use it.
“It isn’t that women are less competent using it, only that they are less confident, often thanks to lack of support in their workplace but also because they just trust it less overall,” said Shorenstein Center Director Nancy Gibbs. “And that skepticism is a valuable part of the larger debate over AI safety and guardrails and value and usage.”
The gender gap in AI adoption is closing, but slowly, according to research from Solène Delecourt, an assistant professor of management of organizations at the University of California at Berkeley. Women still report feeling more apprehensive or cautious about integrating AI into their work, she said, and when it comes to the newest AI tools, the vast majority of early adopters are men.
“Anecdotally, I hear a lot of women say they are so tired of AI,” Delecourt said. “They feel like it’s taking away some of the joy of their work.”
Women also report feeling more time-constrained than men, Delecourt said. At home, they tend to shoulder a larger share of housework and family caregiving responsibilities, and at work, they are often saddled with invisible labor in addition to their regular job duties.
“When you tinker with a tool, there is a lot of wasted time initially,” she said. “So women probably feel like, ‘I have all these tasks to accomplish and I just don’t have this extra spare time.’”
The verdict is still out, of course, as far as whether AI will on balance help people expand their skills — or eliminate their jobs entirely. But it appears that men’s employment has grown faster than women’s in occupations with significant AI exposure — such as software development and financial management — which is creating a gap in job growth, according to data from the Pew Research Center.
Because training, mentorship and workplace support can lead to greater adoption and more excitement among workers, Gibbs said, she encourages employers to incorporate women’s input in these programs.
“When women’s voices are missing from spaces where decisions are made, then arguably we have less cause to trust those decisions,” she said.
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