AI is poised to have a revolutionary impact on the labor market and on the future of work writ large. While it may bring economic benefits, it will also likely be highly disruptive — particularly for women. The AI-driven labor transformation will have a disproportionate negative impact on women in the workforce, further entrenching structural inequalities, reducing the competitiveness of America’s workforce writ large, and diminishing the economic gains we may see from AI.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is projected to increase U.S. GDP growth to almost three percent in the next 10 years, marking a significant uptick in America’s economic productivity. However, that growth may come at the expense of workers. Given the decoupling of productivity growth and real compensation growth in the past decade, along with the potential for AI to supplant the need for human labor in many professions, AI-driven productivity gains may occur with millions of people facing unemployment and reduced wages.
Amid this AI-driven labor transition, women, their jobs, and their professional contributions face a particular kind of vulnerability. Recent U.S. AI policy has de-emphasized AI safety concerns, but AI’s risks remain significant for women in the workforce; even while AI drives productivity upwards, the gendered effects of AI adoption at work will likely only increase economic gender inequality (which bears its own negative impacts on the economy). Policymakers interested in addressing American leadership in AI, along with AI’s impact on the workforce, must also consider gendered effects at play.
Women’s Jobs Are at Risk
Leading AI scholar Laura Bates, for example, has warned that AI will have a “devastating impact on everything from women’s job prospects and careers to their involvement in further developments in the [tech] sector.” Women dominate some of the roles at the highest risk of AI automation and are underrepresented in roles that are more insulated from AI-driven job losses. A joint study by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and Poland’s National Research Institute found that in high-income countries, women are nearly three times more likely than men to lose their jobs due to generative AI, and globally, “4.7 percent of women’s jobs fall into the highest-risk category, compared with 2.4 percent for men.”
The disproportionate impact of the AI-driven labor transition is not only affecting women’s current employment; it will also have enduring impacts on their career prospects in the future as women may be excluded from the new opportunities AI generates, deepening global gender equality in the workforce. For one, workers who do not use AI tools are likely to be left behind. Unfortunately, women are less likely than men to use AI at work, probably due to concerns about trust and accuracy; deploy AI with less frequency than men, if they do use it; and worry more than men about potential ethical issues or the perception that AI use is “cheating.”