Editorial
Technological advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) over the past two years represent one of the most significant global and societal changes of our generation. AI solutions, like generative AI, have quickly become part of our daily lives. The fast-paced change has created excitement and curiosity for us as consumers and as employees.
Yet, fears and concerns remain around the impact of AI on society, the world of work and many roles. Workers will need to learn new skills to adapt to the digital transformation, which may widen the gap for underrepresented people in the workforce.
According to the World Economic Forum, women only represent 22% of AI professionals globally, which highlights the gender disparity in the field of AI. Solutions like OpenAI's ChatGPT have surpassed 300 million weekly average users, yet the top five companies creating LLMs are led by men. And of the eight Big Tech companies, Bloomberg found women held only 20% of technical roles.
Why Diversity in AI Matters
For these AI models to improve, we need people of diverse backgrounds and genders in the loop of the training processes, making decisions to address biases and establish ethical and responsible AI usage.
"Having diverse teams always improves the outcome; the final products are more successful in the market and serve a greater need," said author, data scientist and COO Kim Nilsson.
Nilsson has been advocating and writing about the underrepresentation of women in AI for over 10 years, with the understanding that when a development team has a diversity of experiences, they’ll be less likely to build biased AI models and more likely to build ones based on training data that is more representative of society as a whole.
The concept Nillson is referring to is "AI Model Collapse," where AI models degrade over time due to reliance on narrow and repetitive AI-generated datasets. This leads to data that becomes less effective and more biased over time, reducing its ability to learn and improve.
So How Do We Encourage More Women to Enter Careers in AI?
Increased awareness and funding for STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) programs, such as Girls Who Code, is one way to increase the number of women in AI. STEM programs provide learning and development opportunities to school-aged girls and young women pursuing degrees in these fields or entering the workforce.
Women have additional opportunities to transition into AI careers, through various online courses and membership-based programs, such as Women Defining AI (WDAI).
"WDAI was created to address the glaring gender imbalance in the AI and tech sectors. Historically, women's contributions to technology have been overlooked, and this exclusion stifles diversity of thought, limits innovation, and reinforces inequities. WDAI emerged to tackle this systemic issue by ensuring that women are not just consumers of technology but active creators who influence its development and direction," WDAI co-founder Nichole Sterling said.
Women Defining AI is building a supportive ecosystem that shifts women from passive users of technology to active builders. Initiatives include a Slack-based community network, which provides connections, resources and encouragement for women and non-binary individuals exploring AI.
WDAI also offers various educational programs, where community members gain hands-on experience in no-code and low-code challenges, workshops and accessible content that demystifies AI and builds confidence in technical skills. Peer-based programs, such as "Build TogetHER" encourage women to experiment with generative AI projects and collaborate in hackathons.
WDAI aims to not only increase the ratio of women working in AI but also redefine innovation as a collaborative, inclusive and human-centered endeavor.
The Global Impact of Gender Disparity in AI
The gender disparity in AI professionals captured the spotlight at the 2025 World Women Davos Conference, where Microsoft Switzerland and the Institute for Management Development (IMD) released their joint white paper, "Mind the Gap: Why Bias in GenAI Is a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Challenge." The paper sheds light on the different sources of biases in GenAI, how they manifest and the risks to underrepresented groups. It also highlights approaches to address and mitigate these risks.
The same week Microsoft and IMD released their white paper, the Trump Administration signed three Executive Orders aimed at dismantling diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) initiatives that have shaped Federal anti-discrimination policies for decades.
AI advancements show no signs of slowing down. Which makes it all the more critical to educate women in STEM fields and provide educational and learning opportunities to reduce the current gender imbalances. The time is now to advance women in AI. We can each do our part by bringing this issue to the forefront, as AI technologies will be an integral part of our lives today and within future workplaces.
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Editor's Note: Explore other articles on the impacts of the gender gap:
- Want to Empower Women in the Workplace? Start by Addressing These Common Challenges — The most successful organizations use policy to set standards and culture to sustain meaningful change.
- One More Result of the Pandemic: Women Are Leaving IT — Women are leaving IT in record numbers. Why is this happening now and what can organizations do to stop this from happening?
- Why Women May Not Want to Advance Their Careers Within Your Organization — As the number of women in C-Suite roles hits the lowest level in 10 years, some women are still saying no to career advancement in their companies. Here's why.
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