The future of AI is human. Women must be central to designing it.

“It won’t sound like me.” That was the response from my daughter when I suggested she use AI to help write her first CV. I was a bit surprised – let’s be real, teenagers will outsource anything they can – but it did remind me that the future of AI is most definitely human.

And women must help shape it from the start. AI is more than a tech topic; in reality, it’s about work design. The choices we make now will shape who benefits from it for decades.

The theme for International Women’s Day this year is ‘Give to Gain’, and it’s particularly relevant to AI. Achieving equitable outcomes requires early investment in education, opportunity, mentorship and trust. The return is broader than equity for women alone: it is better-designed work and better outcomes for everyone.

The true human potential of AI

The way we adopt AI matters as much as the fact that we adopt it.

Introducing AI into an organisation isn’t about deploying tools. It requires leaders to make deliberate choices about which work demands human judgement, where systems should support people and what should be automated.

I call this the human-system-human (HSH) approach to work design, a framework I’ve developed to help leaders make those decisions explicitly. In practice, HSH means humans shape the system, systems support human judgement and accountability remains human.  

When this loop is designed intentionally, AI strengthens human value. When it isn’t, that value is quietly eroded.

Why women must help lead AI adoption 

Decisions being made now about AI, often quickly and by a narrow group, will shape how work is experienced for decades. Gender balance and inclusion cannot be an afterthought.

History offers a clear warning. Women adopted the internet, mobile connectivity and digital financial tools later than men. Early access shaped who benefited most, while delayed adoption widened inequality before it narrowed.

There are signs the same pattern is emerging with AI. A 2024 Harvard study synthesising data from 18 studies and more than 140,000 people found gender gaps in generative AI use are nearly universal across regions, sectors and occupations.  

This matters even more because many roles most likely to be transformed by AI are female-dominated. A United Nations Labour Organisation report released last year suggests 9.6% of female-dominated occupations face AI-driven transformation, compared with 3.5% of male-dominated roles.  

Without deliberate upskilling and involvement, women face disproportionate risk, driven less by AI itself than by how it is implemented.

Debunking a common myth

A common misconception is that leadership in AI requires deep technical expertise. What matters far more is the ability to ask good questions, redesign work thoughtfully, and make trade-offs that protect human value.

Over the past 18 months, I’ve immersed myself in learning and experimenting with AI. I didn’t set out to become a coder, but rather a more informed leader, as it became clear this would be a significant people transformation. My team and I redesigned key parts of our work and built 12 custom AI tools to support those decisions.

Watching one of the women in my team deploy her own AI solution live was a powerful moment. There was real joy in seeing what it enabled: more space for higher-value work, stronger judgement and greater impact. AI didn’t reduce the work; it improved it.

I now lead AI Enablement for our business, which brings me back to ‘Give to Gain’. Organisations that want to realise the full value of AI need to give women early decision-making authority while systems are being designed.

That starts with investing in AI education for women in ways that emphasise creativity, ethics and real-world impact. It continues with accessible learning pathways for women at every stage of their careers. Most importantly, it requires women to be present where decisions about work are made.

So, back to my teenage daughter. AI will be native to her generation. What matters to me is that she inherits systems designed with women in mind. I want her, and her peers, to enter a world of work where judgement is valued, agency is shared and what should remain human has been deliberately protected.

This moment in time will be remembered less for the tools we adopted than for the work we chose to redesign and who we invited into those decisions.

The future of AI will be shaped by who gets to design the work around it. Women must be central to designing it.

This article was first published on Stuff.co.nz