Why Women Use AI Less at Work (And Why That Really Matters)

Are you using AI at work — or quietly avoiding it? In this episode of MissPerceived, Leah digs into new research showing that women are about 25% less likely than men to adopt generative AI tools in their jobs. She explains what that means for careers, organizations, and the “brain” of AI itself, and why low female adoption could make AI less accurate for women’s experiences worldwide.
Leah walks through findings from Harvard Business School on global gender gaps in AI use, explores how unsupervised learning means our data is literally training the AI brain, and shows what happens when most of that data comes from men and from rich, English‑speaking countries. She also unpacks the mental load behind women’s hesitation: environmental worries, ethics, stereotypes that say women who use AI are “less competent,” and the pressure to prove your worth without help. Finally, she shares her own experience using AI, why it sometimes feels like “beautiful nonsense,” and asks what kind of future of work we actually want.
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction — are you using AI at work?
01:30 Future of Work Lab: automation vs. AI (what’s the difference?)
02:17 Harvard Business School findings: women 25% less likely to use AI tools
04:36 How your data trains the AI brain — and what happens when women are missing
06:56 Global gaps: rich countries, English speakers, and who AI really “sees”
07:30 Career consequences when women don’t adopt AI at the same rate
08:00 Organizational losses when only some workers use AI
08:50 Environmental and ethical worries as part of women’s mental load
09:16 Code for Good Now study: women seen as less competent when they use AI
11:45 Occupational sorting: why some jobs see more AI than others
12:30 Leah’s own experience: when AI makes her brain “lazy”
13:51 Generational differences: Millennials, Gen Z, Gen Alpha and tech skepticism
14:30 What kind of future of work do we actually want — and who gets to shape it?
Follow Leah: @prof.leahruppanner
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