Is Al cutting women out of leadership roles?

A recent report highlights anew culprit behind the ‘leaky pipeline’ that is excluding women from the workforce

- Somak Ghoshal [e-mail]

Last week, global consultancy firm Capgemini published a report on the state of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the corporate sector, based on a survey of 2,750 leaders across Il countries. The document, titled Gender and Leadership: Navigating Bias, Opportunity and Change, revealed several positive highlights.

A majority of the respondents (77%) believe that women are as effective as men in leadership roles. Over 65% said that having women in leadership roles improves business outcome, and 58% women and 59% men cited confidence as their key strength behind their success.

Since the survey featured only three people who identify as non-binary, the results don’t affirm an improvement of DEImetrics across the board. But, as far as women’s empowerment in the workplace is concerned, it seems attitudes are shifting—even though the gender gap persists in key parameters such as pay parity (52% of the women said they were paid unfairly, while 40% men believed they received a distinct pay advantage).

The report, however, made headlines for calling out a bias that isn’t as visible or obvious. Half of the male respondents considered future-ready critical leadership skills—such as the use of artificial intelligence (AI), automation, data analysis, inovation—to be “inherently masculine”. In contrast, two-thirds of the women saw these skills as gender neutral, though Al proficiency ranked low across genders (47% men and 45% women mentioning Al proficiency to be one of their key skills).