This is the weekly Work Life newsletter. If you are interested in more careers-related content, sign up to receive it in your inbox.
Over the past year, the dominant narrative around artificial intelligence has been that women are falling behind. From a lack of representation in the AI talent pool to lower daily usage and confidence gaps.
However, a new report from the membership and community platform Chief and The Harris Poll suggests the opposite may be true.
This is not to say the challenges aren’t real. Research from Lean In finds that women receive less recognition for using AI at work, less manager support in adopting it and are more likely to fear it will cost them their jobs – structural barriers that deserve their own urgent attention. But conflating those access gaps with a lack of leadership or engagement is shortsighted.
While much of the corporate world measures AI leadership by speed, or who can deploy the newest tools the fastest, female leaders appear to be playing a different game entirely. According to the report, 80 per cent of senior female leaders are already playing active strategic roles in their organization’s AI efforts, with many focused not on building flashy tools, but on governance, ethics and designing how humans and AI work together.
These roles become invisible when the broader business conversation around AI has largely rewarded technical acceleration.
In many ways, the report reframes what “being ahead” in AI should even mean, with female leaders warning that speed itself may be the risk.
Sixty-eight per cent of female leaders surveyed said executive teams and boards at their organizations prioritize AI adoption speed over sustainable workforce implementation. Meanwhile, 87 per cent said they have already witnessed negative organizational consequences when AI is prioritized without human development alongside it.
The consequences are tangible, with leaders reporting seeing declines in strategic thinking, erosion of institutional knowledge, weaker team culture and growing over-reliance on AI systems.
The report also calls out the growing concern on AI’s impact on entry-level workers, with 69 per cent of saying their organizations have reduced early-career hiring because of AI capabilities. While some companies celebrate those efficiency gains, many female leaders appear more concerned about what disappears alongside them, including mentorship pipelines, management development and the critical thinking skills that are often built through foundational work experience.
The report found 81 per cent believe organizations risk not having capable managers in the future if they fail to continue investing in human development now.
At the same time, many female leaders are already building the practical frameworks organizations are still debating in boardrooms. Seventy-eight per cent said they have personal criteria for deciding what work should remain human and what can be delegated to AI.
So are women behind when it comes to AI? It depends on your definition of “behind.”
The report makes it clear that female leaders are not necessarily trying to win the sprint toward maximum automation. They’re building for durability, and betting that the organizations that thrive in the AI era will be the ones that protect human judgment, relationships and long-term capability alongside technological progress.
Fast fact
Career cost
58 per cent
That’s how many mothers have turned down career opportunities because of parenting obligations, according to meditation app company Headway.
Career guidance
Major mistake
One worker made a big mistake at work and ended up getting fired. With shattered confidence, they’re wondering if they should leave the job off their resume, or if there is a way to professionally own the mistake.
Experts say it’s the right move to keep the job on their resume, because removing two years of experience can be seen as a red flag, undersells their skills and can be hard to explain. They should go to interviews prepared with a brief answer for what happened and be ready to discuss what they learned.
Quoted
Adaptability advantage
“The days of staying in a position for years due to your consistency and reliability are becoming a thing of the past. Those things still matter, but the pace of change has altered how long you can rely on that approach before it starts to work against you. What I am seeing now is that the window to adapt is shorter as roles are evolving faster. When you wait until change is obvious to everyone, you are often already behind,” writes business behavioural expert Diane Hamilton.
In this Forbes article, Dr. Hamilton shares why waiting too long to adapt is a career risk, and why some employees are able to adapt faster than others.
On our radar
Graduate gains
According to this Entrepreneur article, as larger companies scale back their entry-level roles, small businesses are scooping up recent graduates specifically for their digital fluency and ability to build relationships.