Need To Know: Women, Work And AI
As artificial intelligence enters the workplace, three women at the forefront of AI, governance and public policy explain why, often considered ‘female’ traits such as creativity, empathy and critical thinking may become the most valuable skills as it advances. By NATASHA BIRD
“What would ChatGPT do?” is the question we’re increasingly asking. Or Claude, or Gemini for that matter, depending on your conversational AI-platform preference. There was once a time, in the not-at-all-distant past, wherein AI dominance seemed like a mere riff in sci-fi plots; a looming threat somewhere on the horizon, coming for our jobs and possibly our autonomy. Yet suddenly, here we are, with AI integrated into our calendars, inboxes, search engines, editing software, customer service systems – embedded in the very mechanics of modern working life, with more and more of us outsourcing our needs to an AI-powered chatbot. But AI’s large language models in particular (or LLMs as they’re called, which include Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini and many more), as helpful as they are, have introduced some real misgivings from a career perspective. Namely, that the concepts of work, ambition and job security are changing in real time, particularly for women.
Most women have spent long years trying to get ahead in industries that were already stacked against them, only now to arrive at another obstacle to promotion, or threat to their role or business more broadly. The irony, according to the women working closest to AI itself, is that the very qualities making women more cautious around the technology may also become their greatest advantage in interacting with it as we move forward.
Sue Turner: “Women are the canaries in the coal mine”
Sue Turner OBE is one of the world’s leading voices on AI governance and ethics, advising organizations on how to adopt artificial intelligence responsibly. With a background that includes business leadership, data governance and emerging technologies, she spends much of her time inside boardrooms helping companies understand what AI can do, what can go wrong, where it can make the biggest difference, and how to plan accordingly.
“Women are more likely to have ethical reservations about using AI,” she says. “But then women get labeled ‘risk averse’ and that’s really lazy thinking.”
Research from Sheryl Sandberg’s non-profit Lean In found that men are 22% more likely to use AI at work and, importantly, 27% more likely to be praised for doing so. Making LLMs potentially a poisoned chalice for women: damned if we do, damned if we don’t. For Turner, the picture is more nuanced. “Women are the canaries in the coal mine,” she says; a barometer for where the dangers are. “We are cautious, yes, but that means we are also the ones less likely to make mistakes when using AI. Investing in women’s skills means we’re going to have fewer negative outcomes.”
“Women are the ones less likely to make mistakes when using AI
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Trepidation is not unwarranted. United Nations research indicates that women are currently three times more vulnerable to AI-driven job displacement than men. Turner believes organizations are moving far faster than governments and institutions are prepared for, often without seriously questioning what sort of workforce landscape they are creating in the process. “We are shifting power through data and AI to a tiny number of people,” she says. “And there isn’t a great debate happening yet in society about what we actually want the future to look like.”
Still, she is wary of catastrophizing. The constructive response, she says, is not opting out, but understanding how systems work. “This is the training for the marathon,” she says. “The next generation of AI tools will be far more powerful than what we have today.”
For women wanting to future-proof their careers, her advice is clear and practical: understand data, workflows and organizational systems. Ask questions. Notice inefficiencies. Learn how businesses actually function behind the scenes. Make suggestions. “The people who are going to become incredibly valuable are the people who can see how things could work better,” she says.
And while much of the conversation around AI focuses on technical expertise, Turner believes that human skills are becoming increasingly important in this context. “Judgment, empathy, creativity, understanding humans – these are the things machines still can’t replicate.” That we will be using AI to counteract inefficiencies, to streamline and tighten procedure is inevitable, but injecting back in a careful layer of human discernment, is essential.
Zehra Chatoo: “The best use of AI is not to surrender your agency”
Zehra Chatoo, former Meta executive and founder of Code for Good Now, works at the intersection of AI, marketing and gender equality. She also serves on the board of UN Women, where she focuses on closing the gender gap in AI. “It’s not about access and it’s not about skills,” she says. “The three biggest barriers for women are trust, ethics and fear of judgment.”
It’s the final point that feels particularly revealing for her. Women, Chatoo argues, are more likely to associate AI use with cheating or cutting corners; an understandable anxiety in cultures where women often feel pressure to over-perform simply to be considered competent.
“The thought of anything eradicating that effort can feel uncomfortable,” she says. Chatoo is adamant that women should not disengage from AI because of those concerns. She advocates for a more collaborative relationship with AI. “The best use of LLMs is not to hand over your thinking. It’s to co-create with them,” she says. “Stay sceptical. Don’t surrender your agency. The value comes from questioning it, pushing it, challenging it. Critical thinking, uncomfortable conversations, challenging ideas – those become more important, not less.”
“Critical thinking, uncomfortable conversations, challenging ideas – those become more important, not less
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While our reservations are all valid, there is a more pressing issue at play. “I don’t want women to be left behind as this technology accelerates and becomes embedded,” she says. “It’s no longer on the edges of our lives. It’s right in the center of them.” The danger, she argues, is not simply that men will adopt AI faster and gain professional advantage while women hesitate, but that the technology itself will continue to be shaped without female perspectives embedded within it. “AI is a technology that is shaped by its user base,” she says. “The input shapes the output. When women aren’t represented, it is going to disproportionately affect us.”
That absence matters because LLMs are already learning from systems, histories and online ecosystems that often replicate existing societal biases. Chatoo believes women’s participation is essential not despite our caution, but because of it. “The reason women aren’t adopting it is exactly what this technology needs,” she says. “It needs our ethics and our judgment. We should be architects of this technology.”
Verity Harding: “You may not be an AI expert, but you are an expert in something”
Verity Harding, author of AI Needs You and director of the AI and Geopolitics Project at the Bennett School of Public Policy, has spent more than a decade working in AI and public policy, including on the leadership team at DeepMind. Unlike many conversations around women and AI, her outlook is optimistic.
“I worry that when people talk about women and AI, it immediately becomes about ethics and risk,” she says. “Whereas when men talk about AI, it’s about building businesses and opportunities.”
In a positive take, Harding sees this moment as potentially transformative for women professionally, particularly because the technology is still so new. “There’s an opportunity in the fact that most people are learning this at the same time,” she says.
The key, she feels, is not in learning how to create technically accurate prompts, or to become a coding genius overnight. Rather it is in developing gentle AI literacy while still focussing on your existing expertise. “You may not be an AI expert,” she continues, “but you are an expert in something.”
“Creativity is still deeply, beautifully human
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Whether that know-how sits in healthcare, fashion, publishing or hospitality, Harding believes domain knowledge remains hugely valuable. “It’s much easier for someone with industry expertise to learn how AI applies to their field than it is for an AI specialist to suddenly understand the complexities of that industry.”
Her advice is simple: experiment. Start small. Use AI tools to solve low-risk problems, automate irritating admin tasks or streamline repetitive work. “Understanding the tools removes a huge amount of fear,” she says. For female entrepreneurs and small business owners, she points out, there is an advantage in using AI to handle the tasks you would otherwise struggle to accomplish without being able to make hires you can’t yet afford.
Harding also pushes back against the idea that AI will flatten all forms of creativity into obsolescence. “I have no desire to read an AI-generated novel,” she says. “Creativity is still deeply, beautifully human.”
History itself offers reassurance too. Societies, she points out, have always absorbed disruptive technologies eventually, from industrialisation to the internet: “There is no reason AI would be uniquely different in that regard.”
Fear is well-founded, as these women acknowledge. But it might also be the case that the future belongs to those capable of combining technological fluency with taste, judgment, emotional intelligence and scepticism. Including women who know when to enlist AI’s assistance – and when not to.