- AI is disrupting white collar roles where women are concentrated, risking wider gender disparities in employment and livelihoods.
- Women are notably underrepresented in AI firms, holding just one in five AI engineering roles across all levels.
- Governments and businesses must invest in AI training and career progression for women from the outset and throughout their careers to avoid widening gaps.
The rise of artificial intelligence could exacerbate gender disparities in the labour market, the World Economic Forum and careers platform LinkedIn warned in a joint report Wednesday.
“What we found is that the type of roles that are being disrupted by AI tend to be the type of roles that women have been concentrated in,” Saadia Zahidi, a managing board member at the World Economic Forum, told a London gathering for the launch of the Global Gender Gap Report 2026.
“It is white-collar work that has brought in a lot of women and given them very good livelihoods over the last few decades, and here is exactly those roles that are being disrupted,” she added.
Within AI companies, the picture is even more striking, with women significantly less represented than in comparable non-AI companies — at all levels — according to the report.
“Women hold just one in every five AI engineering roles,” Sue Duke, managing director at LinkedIn, told the event.
Without more women in scientific fields and emerging AI roles, the economic opportunities created by this technology could primarily benefit men, suggested Duke, based on the report’s findings.
To avoid widening inequalities, Duke believes it is crucial for governments and businesses to invest in bringing women into AI training pathways and roles from the outset — and to continue investing at every stage of their careers.
While gender disparities have narrowed worldwide since the first such WEF report was published 20 years ago, its latest data shows the trend towards closing the inequality gap has slowed in the last decade compared with the previous ten years.
