The Urgency to Close the AI Gender Divide Before It Affects the Pay Gap

Reese Witherspoon recently took to Instagram to lecture her millions of followers about how women aren’t using artificial intelligence enough. She concluded the video with a call to action to learn AI with her.  Witherspoon received thousands of comments criticizing her for being tone-deaf regarding issues including the environmental impact, data center backlash and biases inherent to AI.  Witherspoon is right — there is a growing gender divide with AI — but the response she received might be more indicative of why. If Legally Blonde’s Elle Woods can’t get through to the millennial woman, who can?  No female Altman  The research tells us that women are more risk-averse than men. Women consistently perceive AI as riskier, especially when its economic and societal effects are uncertain.  Women are also less represented in tech. As of 2025, women make up roughly a quarter of the global tech workforce, with less than a fifth in senior leadership roles. Men apply for a job when they meet only 60% of the qualifications, whereas women tend to apply only when they meet 100% of them, according to research.  The need for gender diversity in technology is one side of the conversation. How AI usage is playing out across the societal spectrum is another. A Harvard Business School meta-analysis from April, of 18 separate studies covering over 143,000 individuals and 25 countries, found that women had 22% lower odds of using generative AI than men.  Furthermore, a Deloitte study from November 2024 found that AI adoption declines with age, and the gender gap is most pronounced in the 45-and-up group.  Recruitment company Randstad released a report a year ago that found 71% of AI-skilled workers are men and 29% are women — a 42% point gender gap. Men are more likely to be offered AI training by employers (35% vs. 27%), and women are severely underrepresented in generative AI skills (69% vs. 31%).  Randstad Michael Morris, the global head of platform and talent at Randstad, tells CNET that women are the largest underutilized talent reservoir in the professional workforce.  “The skills embedded in at-risk roles, including relationship management, operational coordination, ethical reasoning and stakeholder communication, are exactly what the new AI-era roles require,” Morris says. “The connection between those two facts should be obvious.”  But upskilling isn’t as simple for some women, especially mothers. Morris says employers need to make AI learning part of the job, not an after-hours expectation, when many women tend to have more responsibilities than their male counterparts.  “The organizations making the most progress are treating AI literacy as a workplace responsibility rather than an individual one,” he says.  While women remain underrepresented in core technical roles, AI-adjacent jobs could serve as bridging options. These include AI ethics and governance, AI in healthcare, education and customer experience, product and operations roles involving AI implementation and data analytics with a social impact focus.  The ‘time gap’ Nitat Termmee/Getty Images According to Lakma Algewatthage, a lecturer in entrepreneurial management discipline at the Australian Institute of Business, the gender divide in AI adoption is a combination of access, socialization, stereotypes and organizational support.  “The time gap is a significant and often underestimated contributor to the topic. Women continue to shoulder a disproportionate share of caregiving and household responsibilities, leaving less flexible time to experiment with emerging technologies, attend training or build confidence through trial and error,” Algewatthage says.  “AI literacy and adoption is not developed through one-off exposure. It requires ongoing practice, curiosity and reflection, all of which demand time.”  In her role as lecturer, Algewatthage says she observes women are less focused on using AI simply to