On a Friday afternoon, at my home office, I built my first tiny, messy app with AI. I barely understood what I was doing, I had many stupid questions and I definitely clicked things I was not sure I should click. It felt powerful and ridiculous at the same time.
There is no way back – it truly sounds like a cheap thriller trailer but it’s true: AI is here to stay and is changing the way we work and live day by day. The developments are quick and mind-blowing and even those deeply involved with the new technology turn their heads left and right trying to keep up with the pace of change.
I’m no expert but I try to keep up with it too. Not because Reese Witherspoon says “it’s time to learn about AI”, nor out of religious devotion to “the prophets of the empire”. I want to understand and use the tool to secure my seat at the table where the decisions about our future are being made. 
Women cannot be too slow to adopt the new technology and let the all male leadership boards make the calls like it’s 1950 again.
What is the gender gap in AI?
Multiple studies over the past 3 years have pointed to a visible gender gap in AI adoption. Women have been slower to adopt AI in their work and personal life since it was first widely introduced. And it is no surprise. The new technology was trained on biased sources and our workplaces that lead AI adoption are far from the equal-opportunity-for-all utopia.
AI continues to reinforce gender stereotypes in its outputs. A 2024 UNESCO study found that LLMs often portray women in domestic roles. AI companies across the world have since claimed to be making serious improvements regarding discriminatory behaviour in LLMs, but the changes can’t have been so huge, as just yesterday I asked ChatGPT to create a picture of a doctor and a picture of a nurse and sure enough the doctor was a man and the nurse was a woman. They were also both young, white and what most of us would call good looking – failing to combat any other stereotypes. I then tried it with other AI tools too, and the result was always the same.
Far more harmful than generating biased pictures, is the surge in online violence aimed at women since the appearance of AI. Women in leadership, business, and politics are increasingly facing deepfakes, coordinated harassment, and gendered disinformation designed to push them off platforms or out of public life.
Even when they don’t have negative experiences with AI, women tend to be more sceptical towards the technology, considering its harmful side effects. In the interviews I have conducted with women on the topic, all of them mentioned at least one aspect of AI that makes them worried about its future impact on our lives. They are concerned about its impact on our environment and about the lack of regulations surrounding the tools.
This already justifies our reluctance to get involved with the AI tools more deeply, but there is another reason behind the gender gap, that has nothing to do with the new technology, but everything to do with our old gender patterns at the workplace.
Men get far more support to try new things and find innovative creative ways to do their work than women are – even when they are not productive.
Women have less freedom for experimentation and potential failure at the workplace. On average, we are more risk-averse due to biological factors, less testosterone and other hormonal differences. However, our risk-averseness at the workplace is largely generated by social conditioning in school, peer groups and later at work. Boys and men are rewarded for taking risks. Girls and women are expected to follow the rules, be busy, be productive, and be good at all times. We get one chance and we are required to make most of it.
In the beginning of AI adoption, women were more likely to be judged and even penalised for using AI – it was considered “cheating” when they did it. To this day, studies show that when a woman uses AI, she is deemed less qualified than a man using AI for the exact same task in the exact same way. Men get the slap on the back, while we have to listen to the recurring lecture on “let me show you, how one can notice that you used AI here..”. So, I guess I shouldn’t?
Furthermore, women have been underrepresented in technical studies and professions, so we often lack the technical knowledge which could give us confidence to experiment with LLMs. When a tool is presented as very technical, opaque and easy to misuse, fear is a rational response.
In this environment, how can we learn and understand what new technology can do for us and, most importantly, how can we truly get involved with making decisions about it?
Why is the gender gap actually a problem?
Women’s hesitation around AI is not ignorance; it is often informed, ethical and justified. But if hesitation turns into absence, the future will be built without us.
If we fall behind in the beginning, it will be difficult to catch up later on. The small usage gap now can become a large opportunity gap later and we should not allow that to happen.
Many women are concentrated in roles more likely to be disrupted by AI; administrative, coordination and support work in particular. All these women will potentially have to look for other jobs and they will need AI skills to find them.
More importantly, if women fail to have a full understanding of AI and all the decisions being made about it, how could we ever contribute to mitigating the risks that come with it? And if we don’t do it, who will?
The almost all male AI CEOs, who don’t even try to play “Möbius”? For one, Sam Altman admits to all the drawbacks of the new technology but lightly declines the responsibility of dealing with them. He says society will figure it out eventually, because “society in general is good at mitigating the downsides”.
I have a sharp memory of my mother cleaning up our vomit and sitting by our bedside whispering the nightmares away after my father enthusiastically bought us all the candy we asked for and let us watch a movie, way too scary for the age we were. I wonder if a similar scene will unfold when the enthusiasm gives way to lack of control and fear and “society” will actually be called upon to sort things out.
What can we do about the gender gap?
Companies have to meet women where they are and provide practical support for building up their AI skills. We should share the knowledge we have already gathered and learn from each other – if not the practicalities, then at least the attitude with which we face these new tools.
Many of the women I talked to mentioned that especially in the beginning, they learnt about AI from friends and family, rather than from colleagues or in the workplace. They felt more comfortable asking the “stupid” questions to their partners or friends and they only started conversing about it at work once they established a better understanding of the whole topic at home.
I built my first vibe-coded app in my home office, with my boyfriend sitting in the other room patiently explaining to me every small question I had about the process. He understood the details much better than I did, but he applauded my naivete-mixed-fearlessness of doing something completely new and unknown to me. Once you start, it really is more about how much time and energy you are willing to put into the learning rather than what skills you already possess.
The good news is that by providing training in safe spaces with detailed and patient explanations, there is the possibility to flip the gender gap. A Chinese study of nearly 12,000 professionals showed that when women are given a risk-free environment to experiment, they actually adopt AI faster than men and feel less anxious doing it. Can we replicate this in the West too?
What can you do about it right now?
If you haven’t, just start with it.
I know it is scary and I know you are concerned about its implications, maybe even about losing the authenticity of your work. But the more you understand the tool, the better you can distinguish what to use it for and what not to use it for.
Women have so many extra tasks, and AI does actually have the potential to relieve us from some of it. If you are scared to try and make a mistake at work, try building something that helps with planning and keeping track of the family’ schedule or any other domestic task.
If not for anything else, start out of the frustration that if you don’t, all the people (mostly men) currently sitting at the table will pile up their pillows and get even more comfortable at making decisions about what our future will look like.
So open the chat, try the prompt, ask the stupid question, and build the broken thing.
Pay attention to who gets trained, who gets praised for experimenting, who gets punished for making mistakes, and who is missing from the rooms where AI decisions are made.
Be critical and fearless. The seat at the table will not save itself.
Written by Gréta Csernik.
Written by Gréta Csernik. Gréta is a returning Lazy Women contributor who writes about the places where gender, work and technology collide. From the women that history erased, to the girls breaking into “male territory” in film and sport, to the women now hesitating at the edge of AI, her essays and interviews keep returning to the same question: whose voices get heard, and who gets left out of the room?
