I recently came across an alarming statistic by the World Economic Forum, which revealed that it will take another 136 years to close the global gender gap.
Despite significant strides toward achieving gender equality in recent years, progress remains frustratingly slow and uneven. However, amidst these challenges, there is reason for hope: the transformative potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to bridge the gender gap and drive meaningful change.
AI has the potential to significantly contribute to improving people’s lives. It can also play a vital role in driving inclusion. It can level the playing field in the workplace and help women achieve their career goals.
Looking back at my own personal growth journey, I can think of few ways in which AI can play a significant role in empowering women in their workplace.
According to research by the Academy of Management, women at work are disproportionately saddled with lower-level responsibilities, such as administrative tasks or data collection, that distract them from more impactful work. Entrusting such routine tasks to AI solutions frees up time and enables women to use their creative abilities, innovative thinking and strategic mindset. AI tools can also increase their productivity by making work more efficient and accurate, and thus supporting organisations with informed decision-making.
Gender-neutral hiring: AI solutions
In addition to streamlining work processes, AI can assist HR departments in addressing institutional biases that can impede women’s career progress. AI algorithms can be used for screening job candidates without prejudice, focusing on their skills and experience instead of their gender. Meanwhile, AI-powered data analytics can alert HR professionals to disparities regarding pay, promotion and retention.
Finally, AI can help companies create an inclusive culture where women feel supported. AI tools can monitor employee satisfaction levels across demographics and highlight problem areas that management needs to rectify.
However, there are serious concerns about the way the technology reflects the world, especially in terms of scaling gender stereotypes.
An analysis done on one of the leading AI-driven text-to-image tools found that for each image depicting a perceived woman, the AI model generated almost three times as many images of perceived men. Most occupations in the dataset were dominated by men, except for low-paying jobs, like housekeeper and cashier.
Categorising images by ethnicity told a similar story. When considering bias in terms of both skin colour and gender, men with lighter skin tones represented the majority of subjects in every high-paying job, including that of a politician, lawyer, judge and CEO.
It seems that AI is only human, or as human as we want it to be.
It is up to us whether we make it biased or fair, discriminatory or inclusive. And we simply cannot let AI perpetuate such a narrow view of the world.
In 2021, UNESCO introduced the Recommendation on the Ethics of AI, adopted by 193 countries. The guidelines focus on AI’s impact on data, the environment, education, research, healthcare, social well-being and gender equality.
At last month’s 2nd UNESCO Global Forum on AI in Slovenia, eight global tech companies – GSMA, INNIT, Lenovo Group, LG AI Research, Mastercard, Microsoft, Salesforce and Telefonica – pledged to apply UNESCO’s recommendation to build more ethical AI. This is clear proof that companies at the vanguard of AI are aware of the inherent risks of the technology – such as the widening of inequalities, the spread of disinformation and the risk of discrimination – and are ready to act to mitigate them.
To solve this challenge, we must address the obvious reason behind it.
In the field of AI itself, women have been historically underrepresented. In 2022, only one in four researchers publishing on AI worldwide was a woman. And the gap is even wider when it comes to AI developers. While talent availability in this space increased six times between 2016 and 2022, the share of women working in AI today is approximately 30 percent, only about 4 percent higher than in 2016. It is this lack of diversity that is producing such inaccurate AI outcomes.
Getting the most out of AI requires unravelling deep-seated, systemic issues. At last year’s Impact Data Summit, hosted by the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth with the Rockefeller Foundation and data.org, Lamia Kamal-Chaoui, Director of the OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities, warned against bringing inequalities from the analogue world into the digital. To prevent that, we must draw diverse voices into the development of AI and remove barriers to women’s participation.
And, as the old saying goes, we must teach them young. But a 2020 report from UNICEF and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) found that globally, only 18 percent of girls in tertiary education were studying science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) subjects, compared to 35 percent of boys. A UNESCO study has found that 57 percent of graduates in STEM fields in the Arab World are women, with the number going up to 61 percent in the UAE.
I’m proud to be working with an organisation that believes in playing its part to reduce the gender gap in STEM education. A prime example is Girls4Tech, the world’s largest STEM program created with the aim of shaping the next generation of female technology leaders. The global educational program seeks to inspire girls between 8 and 16 years to pursue STEM education and prepare them for careers in science and technology, including fraud detective, data scientist and software engineer.
Achieving gender balance in AI requires the engagement of all stakeholders – from governments and international organisations to the private sector, academia and civil society.
We must work together to harness the power of AI for good and maximise its potential to bridge the gender gap. This way, AI can become a mighty force that can help lift women up to their rightful place in society.
Follow us on
