The last five years have seen unprecedented rates of digitalization across every sector of the economy, catalyzed by the pandemic. In 2021 alone, $93.5 billion in private investment was poured into the field, more than double the figure of 2020. Women, however, are being left behind at every step of the artificial intelligence (AI) life cycle – the technology powering the digital transformation.
This gender gap in AI is self-perpetuating. And it risks us being left with an economic and technological system with a massive underrepresentation of women.
The gender gap in AI
Women are not as “online” as men. The pandemic accelerated mobile internet adoption; however, women are 16% less likely than men to use mobile internet across low-and middle-income countries, according to the GSMA data. Then the disparity in the number of women versus men in industry 4.0 exacerbates the lack of entry points for women into tech.
This huge inequity is a problem that has seen no improvement over the past decade, with the share of female artificial intelligence (AI) and computer science PhDs stuck at 20%.
These are pressing problems alone but also lead to ripple effects across the rest of the AI life cycle, particularly in innovation and development. As recent research by the World Economic Forum demonstrates, the percentage of male graduates in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is 400% higher than women graduates (8.2% versus 1.7%).
Continue reading: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/08/why-we-must-act-now-to-close-the-gender-gap-in-ai/
This gender gap in AI is self-perpetuating. And it risks us being left with an economic and technological system with a massive underrepresentation of women.
The gender gap in AI
Women are not as “online” as men. The pandemic accelerated mobile internet adoption; however, women are 16% less likely than men to use mobile internet across low-and middle-income countries, according to the GSMA data. Then the disparity in the number of women versus men in industry 4.0 exacerbates the lack of entry points for women into tech.
This huge inequity is a problem that has seen no improvement over the past decade, with the share of female artificial intelligence (AI) and computer science PhDs stuck at 20%.
These are pressing problems alone but also lead to ripple effects across the rest of the AI life cycle, particularly in innovation and development. As recent research by the World Economic Forum demonstrates, the percentage of male graduates in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is 400% higher than women graduates (8.2% versus 1.7%).
Continue reading: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/08/why-we-must-act-now-to-close-the-gender-gap-in-ai/
