Women held just 13% of C-suite AI roles globally, while women made up 26% of AI hires in the United States last year. The same study finds women use artificial intelligence less often and trust it less than men. The imbalance runs through hiring, decision-making, media coverage and the risks people face when systems are designed without them.
Who Gets to Shape AI
“Women trust AI less than men and for good reason,” gender equity researcher Amy Diehl told USA TODAY. “Since they are largely not at the table when designing AI tools, they suffer disproportionate risks,” including privacy risks, occupational concerns and price increases. That’s not a case for pressuring women to adopt more AI. It’s a record of who has a say in building the tools and who has to live with their effects.
A study released Oct. 14 by the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School found that 57% of women said they had never used AI or used AI tools rarely, compared with 43% of men. Women’s average concern rating was 6.4 out of 10, against 5.9 for men. Men reported more curiosity: 5.8 out of 10, compared with 4.9 for women.
The study compared a Civic Health and Institutions Project survey of U.S. adults in July with anonymized browsing data collected from U.S. adults between July 2024 and August 2026. Researchers also examined more than 75,000 U.S. news articles about AI published between July 2025 and June 2026. Their findings showed significantly less representation of women in the industry.
The Microphone Favors Men
Men accounted for 93.6% of headline mentions in the news sample, while women accounted for 6.4%. Women made up fewer than 10% of sources cited as authorities on AI. The pattern resembles what Stanford computer science professor Fei Fei Li said in 2016: “if you were a computer and read all the AI articles and extracted out the names that are quoted, I guarantee you that women rarely show up.” The study said the pattern persisted ten years later.
Recognition figures tell the same story. Anthropic president Daniela Amodei was recognized 49% of the time, the highest rate for any woman in the study. The least-recognized men, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, each reached 50%. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos had the highest name recognition, at 85%; Fei Fei Li, often called the “Godmother of AI,” was recognized 46% of the time.
“Women, pretty much across the board — from the workforce, encouragement, and training, to how they're represented in the media, to their trust — are consistently underrepresented,” said Laura Manley, executive director of the Shorenstein Center. Manley said the gaps appeared across “so many critical elements of the pipeline.”
Skepticism Isn’t Incompetence
Men answered more factual questions about AI correctly, averaging 7.1 out of 12, compared with 6.3 for women. Women selected “not sure” an average of four times out of 12 questions; men did so 2.9 times. Manley cautioned that uncertainty “does not mean that women don't have the skills or they're not competent in AI.” She said women’s skepticism can be mistaken for a lack of ability or confidence, even when they may simply be less likely to offer a strong opinion in mainstream discussion.
Women’s occupations are more exposed to AI automation globally than men’s: 4.7%, compared with 2.4%. Women also earn 23% of all computer science bachelor's degrees, according to a report from the National Girls Collaborative Projects this year. In the study, 20% of women said women were more likely to be treated unfairly by AI, while 17% of men said men were more likely to be treated unfairly. Women were also more likely to be unsure whether AI treats any group unfairly, at 42%, compared with 31% of men.
The Grace Hopper Celebration, the largest tech conference for women, was canceled Oct. 13 because of a lack of sponsors and funding. Manley said the report wasn’t meant to argue that women and everyone else should use AI more, but “to surface the discrepancies in the underrepresentation and opportunity.” Her warning about the bigger picture is plain: “society needs to take into account” women’s role in the development, deployment and representation of emerging technologies. The question isn’t whether women can be made to trust the system. It’s who gets to build it, and whose concerns count.