The Gender Gap in Generative AI
The gender gap in the professional space has been a long-standing concern. With generative AI being the latest technology that has entered the professional sphere, research has found that a gender gap has emerged in the use of AI as well.
A recent study showed that men are 22% more likely to use AI than women, and researchers also discovered that women accounted for just 42% of the approximately 200 million average monthly users who visited the ChatGPT website worldwide between November 2022 and May 2024.
Why Are Women Less Likely to Use AI?
Why does this gap exist? Generally, women are deemed "too cautious" in the workplace, a generalization rooted in the fact that women tend to be more skeptical of new technologies, especially when it comes to the ethical implications of said technologies.
Generative AI has been a divisive topic since its release, with ethical questions regarding resource usage, human interaction, and content sourcing. Women tend to predict AI will bring less benefit and do more harm across personal, professional, and public life, while men tend to be more optimistic. Women also show more awareness about how models tend to get hostile. In addition, more women reported feeling like they were cheating by using AI and felt threatened by it. Due to these factors, women have a slower adoption rate than men in both professional and personal settings.
The Design Problem Nobody Is Talking About
These attitudes don't exist in a vacuum and are compounded by the fact that the current AI systems aren't adequately designed for women, which could further widen the gap and amplify current inequalities. This is no accident: women make up only 22% of AI professionals, meaning they have been largely left out of the creation of these products.
When a group is excluded from the design process, the resulting product tends to feel foreign or even hostile to them, and this is exactly the experience many women report with AI today. That exclusion also has deeper consequences. There is a potential feedback loop where women's underrepresentation in AI use leads to systems trained on data that inadequately reflects women's preferences and needs, producing more bias, which in turn drives further disengagement.
Women are already tragically underrepresented in data more broadly, and AI risks compounding that invisibility.
Why This Moment Is Critical
With generative AI being a powerful tool in innovation and workforce productivity, it is important that everyone is equipped to deal with this technological change. This makes the current moment critical. If women disengage from this technology at this early development stage, we will likely be left out and further help build the biases in these systems.
While there are some ethical implications for the use of AI, women should not shy away from using it. It is a powerful and imperfect tool, and their critical perspective is exactly what it needs.
The Good News and What You Can Do
The good news is that it is not too late. Generative AI is currently evolving, and researchers are testing and improving based on feedback received. While it seems like a challenge to learn a new tool on top of the work that we are already doing, it is of utmost importance that more women join the conversation to better improve and develop these systems.
The gender gap in AI is definitely a multifaceted issue, stemming from existing cultural and systemic issues, and we must actively work to close this gap by being active participants in these systems, while acknowledging their flaws.
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About Avni Mohan
Avni Mohan is a 2026 AdaMarie Fellow, AI Engineer Intern, and emerging technologist whose work sits at the intersection of machine learning, data science, and real-world problem solving. With a background in computer science and early experience in genomic research, she is building a career that moves fluidly between data science, consulting, and research — driven by a curiosity about how technology can create meaningful impact beyond the lab.
