Is AI Making Life Easier for Women or Creating New Gaps?
AI is meant to be an equal opportunity tool for all. Easily accessible and readily available to take mundane tasks off the user’s plate, to simplify, and to optimize. Giving the user back more time, energy, and brain space now that they can outsource low-stakes tasks like drafting emails, meeting agendas, and project briefs. It can also be used to sync several different calendars to make one “master calendar” or make a grocery list with certain ingredients and restrictions. All this to say the founders and creators of various AI tools have promised “easier” and “better” daily lives for those who adapt to using their apps. But is AI truly making things “better” and “easier” for everyone or simply a select few? Is it closing the gap for women and working mothers, groups that have been disproportionately affected in the workplace and society? While some have argued one gender is adapting much more quickly to this new technology, recent surveys and data show it is a bit more complex than that. According to the Pew Research Center, gender does play a factor in how people use and think about Artificial Intelligence ( AI). A survey conducted in February 2026 found that Chatbot use is on the rise for both men and women, but found that men are more likely to say Chatbots are helpful for their productivity (35% of men versus 25% of women). The technology is also viewed differently by genders. Across surveys, there’s a consistent pattern where women tend to view AI more negatively than men. And when it comes to societal impact, a larger percentage of women -43% expect AI will affect society negatively.
While Chatbots seem to be adopted by both genders equally, women tend to view the technology differently and have more concerns overall. Concerns that are valid, as many AI tools have shown an inherent gender bias. Per UN News, a study of 133 AI systems found that 44% demonstrated gender bias, while more than a quarter showed both gender and racial bias. So while studies claim men are more easily and readily adapting to the new technology and women are getting “left behind”, women may actually have more reasons to be skeptical of this new technology. According to UN News, large language models have repeatedly associated women with the home, family and childcare, while linking men to business, leadership and career success. In some cases, AI systems have generated responses portraying women as sexual objects or as subordinate to men. In fact, when researchers asked large language models to simply complete a sentence that began with a person's gender, about one in five responses came back sexist or misogynistic.
Researchers argue this is not a design flaw, but a pattern documented by systems at scale. UN Women noted, “They are the predictable output of AI systems trained on decades of unequal representation of women and men”, UN Women notes. There are also growing concerns about AI generated content increasing online harm and abuse towards women. According to UN Women, nearly one in four surveyed women human rights defenders, activists and journalists reported experiencing AI-assisted online violence.
In addition to concerns like online harm and violence and inherent bias, another concern is that there is a double standard in how AI use is judged. Experimental research summarized in Harvard Business Review found that women are judged more harshly than men for their use of AI. One study had participants evaluate identical lines of code attributed to an engineer. The engineer was described as a woman using AI or a man using AI. Per Harvard Business Review, “when reviewers thought a woman had used AI to write code, they questioned her fundamental abilities far more than when reviewing the same AI-assisted code from a man,” the researchers concluded.
The research paints a complicated picture of AI and its relationship with gender. But statistics about how people perceive AI do not necessarily tell us how they experience it in their everyday lives. While women may be more likely to express concerns about the technology, that does not mean there are not ways that they can benefit from it or use it to improve their daily lives.
To gather an individual perspective, I interviewed Ash BG, a mom, writer and tech founder from Sydney, Australia. Ash is the founder of You Wanted This, a feminist motherhood Substack, and Tether: The Mental Load App. Tether helps couples balance the mental load by making invisible labour, visible. Her experience provides a closer look at the potential benefits of AI on an individual level, offering another side of a conversation that is often dominated by its potential risks.
When I asked about her thoughts on AI use as a working woman, mother, and tech founder, Ash shared, “My thoughts on AI are complicated. I use it a lot. I am a mum, I have a job, I have freelance clients, I have a tech startup, I have a Substack, and I have social media accounts for my Substack and startup (even writing that out made me feel dizzy!) I will be really honest and put my hand up and say that I would not be able to do all the things I do if it weren't for AI. As a busy mum, it's the only way I can get by. I use it for everything from organising my thoughts to decision-making, to developing social graphics and strategy.”Ash also highlighted an important reality for many women, especially working mothers: the mental load. The invisible labor of keeping track of things, like dentist appointments, shoes your kids have grown out of, milk that needs to be bought from the store, field trip forms to sign, and all the other mental tasks that can feel impossible to keep track of and outsource. Ash shared, “AI genuinely reduces my mental load so much that I can't imagine not using it now, which is perhaps the most scary part.” Even in two-parent working homes, women disproportionately carry the mental load for their families and children. Could AI be used to offset this? Ash acknowledged that while AI use has benefits, its use is also complex and comes with concerns. “But I would be lying if I didn't say that every time I use it I get a pang of guilt. AI has been (and is being) used to hurt women and other marginalised groups all over the world. It has gender bias built in, because it reflects the world that it was built in. And the people at the top are not doing enough to interrogate these biases. Women have been more sceptical to adopt AI and that has resulted in women falling behind in its use, giving men an advantage, and it has also meant that it's taken longer for us to identify, and then fix the gender bias within it. I do hope that will be possible one day, but we are a long way away,” she shared.
The larger issues that need to be addressed with the long-term use and development of AI will be dependent on whose experiences AI reflects, its design, and who is involved in shaping the systems. UN Women is calling for gender equality and the rights and experiences of women and girls to be integrated at every stage of the AI lifecycle, from development through to deployment and governance, per UN News.
Ash also pushed back on the idea that individual users, particularly mothers, should solely carry the burden of responsibility for the larger consequences of AI. She questioned why women who are already carrying significant responsibilities should feel guilty for using a tool that makes their lives easier, while the companies and governments developing and regulating the technology face less scrutiny. “But everytime I feel guilty I think to myself "Why is is on me to shoulder these guilt? Why should an individual mum who is just doing her best to get by in a world that provides very little support be questoining the impact that AI is having on the world. What about the coroporations who are rolling it out blindly without considering the ramifications? What about the governments that are refusing to regulate the technology properly? And the tech giants who are not doing enough to make sure that it is safe for women and minorities everywhere? Where is their sense of guilt? Women and mothers have enough guilt as it is and as a society we love the idea of a self sacrificing mother, but I don't think we should be made to feel more guilty for trying to make our own lives a little easier”, she shared.
When asked to share her final thoughts on AI and if it can help close the gap for women and working moms, Ash shared, “For now, my advice is this: Use it to make your life easier, to reduce your mental load, and to take time-consuming administrative tasks off your list. But make sure you're training it correctly. Question the bias. Push back on the misogyny. Don't forget that AI is learning from us.”
Ash’s experience shows that the conversation around AI and gender cannot be reduced to simple questions of who is using the technology and who is not. While broader research is raising concerns about unequal impact and bias, individual use cases show it has meaningful benefits. These realities are not mutually exclusive. Understanding both is key to understanding AI’s complicated relationship with gender and whether the technology is actually narrowing existing gaps or simply changing the way those gaps appear.
Written by Hannah Lacy
Bio: Hannah Lacy is a digital content strategist with over seven years of experience in marketing and social media, and more than a decade of experience as a freelance writer contributing to various publications. A working mother of two school-aged children, she writes at the intersection of ambition and parenthood, with a passion for storytelling, advocating for working moms, and partnering with mission-driven brands and organisations.
