From classrooms to boardrooms, from public services to global supply chains, artificial intelligence is reshaping how societies function and how people work. According to the World Economic Forum (WEF)’s Future of Jobs 2025 Report, 44% of workers’ skills are expected to be disrupted within the next five years. By 2030, AI and automation will reshape nearly every sector of the global economy, creating new roles, redefining existing ones, and displacing many more. As with previous technological shifts, this moment is not only about innovation; it is about access, inclusion, and choice. Yet this transition is unfolding unevenly, and women, in particular, risk being left out of both the decisions and the benefits. This is particularly concerning as women’s voices remain underrepresented in the very spaces where these decisions are made.
The widening gender gap
Women systematically face a two-part problem: relatively fewer women are in jobs predicted to be augmented, while more are in roles projected to be disrupted, making their jobs obsolete. Numbers reveal that women are 1.5 times more likely to work in roles at high risk of automation. Women remain concentrated in administrative and routine roles, most vulnerable to automation, while facing unequal access to the digital skills training that could help them pivot to emerging opportunities. This creates a growing imbalance resulting in displacement.
Meanwhile, women remain underrepresented in STEM fields that are essential gateways to AI-augmented careers, a pattern that extends into AI design and leadership itself, where women’s limited presence means the technology is being built without their perspectives, potentially embedding biases that further disadvantage them in the labor market.
This gap reflects systemic barriers, not individual choices. Among these barriers, women carry 2.5 times more unpaid care work on average than men globally, directly limiting the time available for reskilling. The numbers from the UN Women and LinkedIn report “Women and Future Jobs” underscore the urgency; only 29.4% of AI engineering skill-listers on LinkedIn were women in 2025.
Women who gain access to AI-adjacent and transferable skills can move into emerging roles, but only if supported by gender-responsive policies and training systems. This needs to be addressed through targeted training and learning initiatives, equipping women, diplomats, public servants and other change agents with the competencies to engage meaningfully in the multilateral processes that are actively shaping AI governance and the future of work. Without such intervention, WEF projects that by 2030, 120 million workers will face medium-term redundancy. For women, the consequences extend beyond individual livelihoods, displacement without a pathway back ripple across entire households and communities, and economies lose the multiplier effect that women’s economic participation is known to generate.
Yet no single government can solve this alone. AI technologies cross borders, professional qualifications need cross-border recognition, and the standards governing AI are set in international bodies where women’s voices are already underrepresented, making multilateral action not just useful, but structurally necessary. Realizing this requires strengthening the institutional systems, legal, technical and administrative, that enable developing countries to translate international AI commitments into national implementation strategies, monitoring frameworks and evidence-based policy. Without these institutional foundations, even the best-designed global agreements risk remaining aspirational.
A path forward
Countries cannot bridge this divide alone. Joint investment in lifelong learning, shared digital infrastructure, and inclusive funding mechanisms are essential to ensure that women are not left behind.
The solution requires action across three fronts. First, national AI strategies must include mandatory gender-disaggregated skills targets and reporting mechanisms, moving beyond voluntary commitments to robust accountability mechanisms. Second, multilateral funding bodies have already demonstrated that gender conditionality works: the Green Climate Fund’s model of tying disbursements to measurable inclusion targets has driven tangible results. The same approach should be applied to AI transition funds and strategic multistakeholder partnerships to ensure that women are not an afterthought in resource allocation. Third, cross-border recognition of non-formal and community-based digital credentials must be prioritized as women disproportionately gain skills outside traditional institutions. Without recognition frameworks, those skills remain invisible to labor markets. This matters especially for leadership and soft skills development: the human capabilities that community spaces cultivate, creative thinking, emotional intelligence, strategic communication, are precisely what AI cannot replicate, and therefore increasingly what employers and institutions need.
This shift creates an opening to level the playing field if women have equal access to skill development. Organizations worldwide are already establishing innovative approaches, from coding bootcamps targeting underrepresented groups to AI literacy programs integrated into community development initiatives.
Why multilateral action matters
As Dr. Alessandra Sala, Global President of Women in AI and Co-Chair of UNESCO’s Women for Ethical AI, has argued, “diversity and inclusion in AI is a global commitment and a collective leader’s responsibility.” This framing is instructive: the challenge is not technical but structural, and the response must match its scale.
As the UN’s training and capacity-building arm, the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) plays a catalytic role in this effort. Through its Gender and Diplomacy programmes, the Institute has reached government officials across regions, building the leadership and gender-responsive capacities needed to drive systemic change at the policy level, directly advancing the empowerment of individuals and strengthening the national institutions that the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development demands. Ultimately, this work begins with individual commitment and collective will.
Whether AI deepens inequality or expands opportunity will depend on who is enabled to shape it. As part of the effort to include all voices around the table, the forthcoming UNITAR Online Certificate on Women’s Leadership – ‘Make Your Voice Heard,’ offers a concrete starting point. Designed as a space for women leaders and professionals to navigate and lead an increasingly AI-driven world, the program builds the confidence, capabilities, and networks needed to influence the policy discussions and regulatory conversations where the rules of our AI-driven future are being written.
The question is not whether women will be affected by AI’s transformation of work, but whether the international community will act decisively now to ensure they have the tools to lead in the economy of tomorrow. Ready to hear your voice? Register now and join a global community of women leading the change.
ABOUT UNITAR
Established in 1965, the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) is the dedicated training arm of the United Nations. Its mission is to strengthen knowledge and skills through high-quality training, research and innovative learning solutions.
Through strategic partnerships and a global learning platform, UNITAR builds skills of individuals, and enhances capacities of institutions and organizations, particularly those in vulnerable contexts, to accelerate progress towards the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and other global commitments.