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There's a Reason Women Aren't Swooning Over AI Like Men Are --- Or rather, a great many reasons [View all]
https://thenoosphere.substack.com/p/theres-a-reason-women-arent-swooningWay too much to summarize here.
Please read.
According to a recent Harvard Business School meta-analysis of 18 studies, women have 22% lower odds of using generative AI websites and apps than men, both at work and in everyday life. And this pattern holds across countries, sectors, occupations, and tools. Between 2022 and 2024, women accounted for roughly 42% of global users of ChatGPT and Perplexity websites, and just 31% of Anthropic’s. On smartphones, the gap widens even further: only 27% of ChatGPT app downloads come from women.
The oft-proposed explanation is that women understand this new technology less, largely because they work in roles with lower exposure to it. Women are, after all, still outnumbered in STEM degrees and careers, including in AI-specific roles. The same is true in AI leadership — women hold fewer than 14% of senior executive positions in the industry. But Harvard’s study also found that the usage gap remains even when women are explicitly given opportunities to learn and use AI tools.
The gap’s root causes just aren’t as simple as women being ‘less into technology’ or lacking exposure or training.
snip
When it comes to AI, women’s approach seems no different. Women report more negative attitudes toward AI than men do, mostly because they anticipate that its harms might eclipse the benefits. Concerns about transparency, safety, data privacy, fairness, inclusivity, sustainability, and collective well-being all weigh more heavily on women’s minds, including those working in tech. Unsurprisingly, it was two Black women, Joy Buolamwini and Timnit Gebru, who first sounded the alarm about racial and gender bias in AI facial analysis software..
The oft-proposed explanation is that women understand this new technology less, largely because they work in roles with lower exposure to it. Women are, after all, still outnumbered in STEM degrees and careers, including in AI-specific roles. The same is true in AI leadership — women hold fewer than 14% of senior executive positions in the industry. But Harvard’s study also found that the usage gap remains even when women are explicitly given opportunities to learn and use AI tools.
The gap’s root causes just aren’t as simple as women being ‘less into technology’ or lacking exposure or training.
snip
When it comes to AI, women’s approach seems no different. Women report more negative attitudes toward AI than men do, mostly because they anticipate that its harms might eclipse the benefits. Concerns about transparency, safety, data privacy, fairness, inclusivity, sustainability, and collective well-being all weigh more heavily on women’s minds, including those working in tech. Unsurprisingly, it was two Black women, Joy Buolamwini and Timnit Gebru, who first sounded the alarm about racial and gender bias in AI facial analysis software..
And the fact that the LLM databases reflect societal biases, (mentioned in the article)
Men? NOTHING COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG. (I'm a male)
I make a short diversion here.
https://www.boredpanda.com/funny-men-safety-fails/
👆👆👆👆👆👆👆👆👆👆
Bored Panda:
20 Reasons Why Women Live Longer Than Men (illustrated)
Returning to the topic:
Harvard Business School.
https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=66548
Global Evidence on Gender Gaps and Generative AI Over Time
By: Katelyn Cranney, Solène Delecourt and Rembrand Koning
Abstract
Generative AI has the potential to transform productivity and reduce inequality, but only if adopted broadly. In this paper, we synthesize evidence from 76 sources from over 100 countries and analyze web traffic data to show that gender gaps in generative AI use are nearly universal and persistent. Focusing on the 318,924 respondents from sources that report usage rates for both men and women, we estimate an AI adoption rate of 47.8% for men versus 39.3% for women, a relative gap of 22%. While this relative gap has shrunk over time, it has stabilized at roughly 16% since early 2025. These patterns hold in global web traffic data on the ten most visited AI tools. This data also reveals that women generally spend less time using AI and that the gaps are largest for frontier tools. Our findings are consistent with a view that as AI diffuses, the gap shrinks as women are exposed to and gain familiarity with AI, but that institutional, organizational, and social frictions will likely lead to persistent gaps in who uses AI.
PDF download:
https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/download.aspx?name=25-023.pdf
My opinion?
As someone who has survived nearby lightning, military service, Boston and Bay Area driving, playing all my life with electricity, poison ivy AND poison oak (both coasts), Richard Nixon, Two Bushes, Ronald "They shot my brains out and nobody could tell the difference" Reagan, Gerald "I played without a football helmet" Ford and two shitloads of Trump (so far) I can say that
"You don't play chicken with rattlesnakes, nor do you ever win with condo salespersons, except by walking away" usually backward except for the couple who were taking selfies at Taft Point in Yosemite, who walked backwards at the worst possible place to do so.
In my book, "AI" stands for Alien Indigestion.
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