Women in AI: The Double Gender Gap Explained
7 Oct 2026
I have been nominated?! Women use AI less. And women have less say in how it is built.
I have been nominated?! Women use AI less. And women have less say in how it is built.
That is the double gender AI gap. One Million Women! is putting names and faces to the women working on it, and I am one of the Women in AI nominees. 🙏
Thank you to everyone who nominated me. Thank you to the team behind it, and to Hapag-Lloyd, Deutsche Telekom, The Female AI Club and gematik for backing it.
I help senior leaders use AI without losing what makes them good at their jobs. That is why this matters to me.
When women are visible in AI, the next woman sees she belongs in the room. My son is watching too. 😍
Congratulations to every woman on the list. I am proud to stand next to you.
Who else should be visible?
What the double gender AI gap looks like in a coaching room
The nomination sits inside a pattern I notice often in coaching conversations. A senior woman mentions, almost as an aside, that she has been using an AI tool for months. She never brought it up in a team meeting.
The Konstanz AI Study from the University of Konstanz found that almost half of employees use an AI tool their employer never introduced. The study did not break the number down by gender, but the pattern in my own coaching sessions lines up with it closely.
I wrote about a related pattern in what senior leaders actually need from AI in 2026: the leaders who stay confident with AI are the ones who say out loud which part of a task they handed to the tool, and which part stayed theirs.
The habit I keep seeing with senior women: good at a tool, using it for months, and never naming it out loud in front of her own manager. The visibility gap starts here, long before anyone counts who is in the room for an AI decision.
Three patterns show up with the senior women I coach on this:
→ Waiting for full confidence before mentioning a tool already used well.
→ Crediting the tool for a result, instead of naming the judgment behind it.
→ Assuming visibility will follow good work on its own.
Naming the habit out loud, the next time it happens, closes more of the gap than a confidence course would.
If this resonates and you want a practical tool you can use, I have a free Speak Up Quiz that helps you see what is really holding you back from naming your own work in meetings, with your boss, or in important conversations. Leave your email here and I will send it over: https://www.thechangerepublic.com/free-resources