There\u2019s a common fear among people who work in Silicon Valley: snag one of the fast-growing, high-paying jobs in artificial intelligence, or get trapped in the \u201cpermanent underclass\u201d, a phrase describing the fate of those who won\u2019t have upward mobility in the age of AI.<\/p>\n
The phrase usually describes a future in which AI automates human jobs. But for women in tech, it\u2019s starting to look like the present.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of people say: \u2018Oh, AI is lowering barriers, it\u2019s equalizing the playing field for women,\u2019\u201d said Urvashi Batra, co-founder and CEO of Prioriwise, an AI platform for IT service providers. \u201cI actually think it\u2019s the opposite.\u201d<\/p>\n
Batra said people take her less seriously as the founder of an AI company than her male co-founder. When pitching investors, she and her co-founder have learned that they are more likely to get an investment if he does the pitching.<\/p>\n
Women made up only about a quarter of new hires in AI roles in the last year, compared to 50% of new hires in non-AI roles, according to a recent report<\/a> from LinkedIn. In executive roles, that number drops to just 13%. At the same time, LinkedIn\u2019s research<\/a> shows that women are more likely to work in roles with high exposure to AI disruption, like customer service, meaning they are also at higher risk for job loss due to AI.<\/p>\n AI jobs, whose postings have doubled since 2023, come with a salary premium, on average paying more than twice as much as roles that don\u2019t involve working with AI, according to LinkedIn\u2019s research. But women who do have jobs in AI are disproportionately concentrated in low-paying roles, like data annotators, said Sarah Steinberg, the head of global public policy partnerships at LinkedIn. Across all AI occupations, men have $45,000 higher median pay than women, partly due to the types of jobs they are likelier to have.<\/p>\n \u201cAI is creating some of the fastest growing, highest paying and most consequential jobs in the global economy,\u201d said Steinberg. \u201cWomen are just strikingly underrepresented.\u201d<\/p>\n The ongoing trend could produce the greatest gender pay gap in generations and leave women out of building a technology that shaped the economy, advocates for women in tech said.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we\u2019re witnessing is a sort of backsliding,\u201d said Brenda Darden Wilkerson, president of AnitaB.org, a non-profit devoted to advancing women in tech jobs.<\/p>\n Initiatives to promote women in the tech industry have been ongoing for years, with mixed results. Women now hold about one-third<\/a> of tech jobs in the US. But research<\/a> has found that women leave the tech industry at a much higher rate than their male counterparts, citing factors like non-inclusive cultures and barriers to advancement.<\/p>\n \u2018I\u2019ve seen so many women fall through the cracks\u2019<\/p>\n Women working in AI may face even greater challenges. \u201cAI moves extremely fast, and the pressure to keep up is immense,\u201d said Jayeeta Putatunda, an AI engineering lead at investment firm Turing. \u201cI have seen throughout my career so many amazing women I know kind of fall through the cracks.\u201d<\/p>\n Putatunda said it\u2019s not uncommon to be the only female engineer on a team, and that when women are outnumbered, they have to speak up louder to make their ideas known. Mentorship in the AI field, especially by other women, can be hard to come by. And the breakneck pace of AI advancements means anyone working in the field should expect to put in long hours in order to keep up.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you have very ambitious career goals in this field, there will be seasons when you work beyond normal hours,\u201d she said, noting that a culture of working 12-hour days to keep up was not uncommon. \u201cI don\u2019t think there is always a neat shortcut around that than to put in the hours.\u201d<\/p>\n