Artificial intelligence presents both opportunities and risks for gender equality, with women facing unique vulnerabilities. Addressing these challenges requires reskilling women, strengthening social safety nets, and institutionalizing inclusive governance frameworks to ensure balanced benefits for all.
Recently, the driverless taxi service Robotaxi Apollo Go expanded coverage in Wuhan in the People’s Republic of China. This sparked debate among women and men, with concerns ranging from passenger and pedestrian safety to unemployment among taxi drivers.
Robotaxis highlight gender dynamics in AI mobility. While some view it as a safer alternative, others fear it could reduce women’s transportation jobs and fail to address safety needs, especially for marginalized groups. Robotaxis exemplify the “AI Era” – while it may promise prosperity, it is highly complex, especially when gender equality aspects are considered.
To prepare for a possible AI-driven future, we need to identify the channels through which AI impacts gender equality and to configure a set of approaches to address them. We should consider the following:
The digital divide between men and women could widen in an AI-driven society without proper policy intervention. Women constitute only around 22% of global AI professionals. Studies show that asymmetric gender power relations can be magnified from the education sphere to the workplace.
Women living in poverty are most likely to lag in AI-facilitated transformation, since they are already less represented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education, jobs, and access to relevant services.
AI will bring contextualized, intertwined, and uneven effects on the labor market which may either boost productivity or replace jobs. For instance, when manual or administrative work, predominantly undertaken by women, is substituted by AI technologies, women may be easily dragged into poverty, putting women who lack the necessary skills at greater risk of being displaced.
Nobel Prize Winner Daron Acemoglu has pointed out that less educated women may experience declines in wages, increased inequality, and the gap between capital and labor income will likely widen.
Governing the AI Commons is a critical topic as AI fosters a borderless “knowledge commons”— or data collectively owned and managed by the online community. Research has argued that the digital transition, including the use of AI, accompanied by personal data commodification, can perpetuate gender discrimination while blurring public-private boundaries.
The AI era has the potential to bring prosperity with equality, but only if both women and men are equally equipped and updated with necessary skills.
A gender perspective should be applied when evaluating ownership of digital properties to prevent overuse or underuse of shared resources, which lead to the tragedy of the commons or the tragedy of anti-commons. The tragedy of the commons involves over-exploiting shared resources due to self-interest, while the tragedy of the anti-commons highlights how prevalence of exclusion rights can hinder the use of resources, such as in digital patents and technology.
By considering the unique needs and contributions of women, governance frameworks can balance sustainable digital resource management with inclusive benefits for all.
Generative AI could be the “invisible hand” behind gendered hierarchy and gender-based violence. A recent study of 133 AI systems found that 44.2% exhibited gender bias. In AI-generated narratives, women are often associated with family roles and described as less powerful than men, reinforcing harmful stereotypes.
Women are particularly vulnerable to AI-driven risks, including tech-facilitated gender-based violence. Biased algorithms, the rise of deepfake technologies that mimic real people doing or saying things they never did, and AI-driven misinformation and disinformation amplify the multiple forms of online harassment and violence, threatening women’s rights.
Machine learning is a self-reinforcing process that evolves based on the data it is fed. This places significant responsibility on decision-makers and AI developers to refine regulations, governance, and practices to address AI-driven inequalities and risks such as gender-based violence.
Given these drivers of impact, here are some proposed actions to ensure a gender-equal future with AI.
Reskill and upskill women. The 2024 Greater Mekong Subregion Gender Equality and Inclusion Forum highlighted the need to prepare women for an AI-driven future. Initiatives like Sisters of Code, the first female coding club in Cambodia, are helping girls learn programming, while Bixie, a female-focused app, is improving financial inclusion through digital empowerment for women.
Governments, development institutions, private sector and relevant stakeholders should join hands and invest in women and girls in STEM, equipping them with skillsets to benefit from, frame, and lead the new era.
Strengthen the social safety net. Female workers, especially those in informal sectors are more likely to be affected by AI’s substitution effect. Countries are at a pivotal moment to formalize their social policy frameworks facing an AI future, for instance, experimenting with universal basic income to prepare their citizens for a new labor market dynamic. Meanwhile, AI can also serve as a tool for identifying vulnerable populations and as a bridge for delivering social assistance.
Institutionalize and harmonize the AI governance framework. The EU has taken the lead with its AI Act, the first comprehensive legislation on AI governance. Countries without relevant laws and regulations need to take proactive steps to develop their frameworks.
These frameworks should ensure that policy development equally involves women and men across sectors; country laws be updated to explicitly prevent and address AI-facilitated gender-based violence; and the global community make coordinated efforts on AI governance and align codes of conduct when using AI tools.
In AI projects, women should be consulted in the data collection process to mitigate and reduce biases from male-dominated inputs. Additionally, policy tools, such as an AI tax, can be leveraged to incentivize innovators and capital to “race to the most inclusive” rather than “race to the most lucrative.”
Jinan, Shandong Province of the People’s Republic of China recently began test-running its first batch of electric robo-buses. New job dynamics have been observed. Drivers are being replaced by safety controllers; while communications and coordination roles, primarily held by women, remain crucial, as passengers continue to seek instant reliable support from human operators.
The AI era has the potential to bring prosperity with equality, but only if both women and men are equally equipped and updated with necessary skills.
Ultimately, the great potential of AI lies in the hands of humans who can build a future where women and men equally benefit from AI through increased human capital, stronger social welfare systems, and AI-facilitated digital commons.
