Maternity Setbacks, 12-Hour Days, and the Invisible Barriers Pushing Women Out of the AI Boom

Artificial intelligence is creating some of the fastest-growing and highest-paying jobs in the global economy, yet women accounted for only 26 per cent of new AI hires in the US in 2025, compared with 50 per cent of new hires in non-AI occupations, according to LinkedIn research.

Meanwhile, demanding working cultures, career breaks and established hiring networks present additional barriers for women trying to enter and remain in the sector.

LinkedIn's research also found that women hold just 13 per cent of C-suite positions in AI roles at AI companies across 27 countries. The figures highlight a gender divide that extends beyond hiring and into the senior positions shaping the industry's future.

The problem extends beyond who gets hired. Women working in technology say the relentless pace of AI development, long working hours and a lack of support can make it harder to remain in the field once they get there.

Jayeeta Putatunda, an AI engineering lead at investment firm Turing, says the pressure to keep up with rapidly changing technology can be immense. 'AI moves extremely fast, and the pressure to keep up is immense,' she says, adding: 'I have seen throughout my career so many amazing women I know kind of fall through the cracks.'

Women Secure Just a Fraction of AI Jobs

The gender divide is emerging as the AI jobs market expands rapidly. LinkedIn figures show the number of AI job postings in the US has doubled in recent years, while typical AI roles pay more than twice as much as non-AI roles.

Yet women are not benefiting equally from that boom. Sarah Steinberg, who leads global public policy partnerships at LinkedIn, says women in AI are heavily concentrated in lower-income positions such as data annotation, rather than roles commanding the biggest salaries. LinkedIn's research found that women make up more than half of hires for data-annotation roles, one of the lowest-paid AI occupations, while they account for less than a quarter of hires in several higher-paying AI roles.

The $45,000 (£37,290) figure reflects a relationship between the gender mix and pay of AI occupations, rather than a simple finding that male AI workers earn $45,000 more than female workers. LinkedIn found that a 10-percentage-point increase in the male share of hires was associated with roughly $45,000 higher median listed pay across AI occupations.

Steinberg says: 'AI is creating some of the fastest growing, highest paying and most consequential jobs in the global economy', but adds that 'women are just strikingly underrepresented.'

The imbalance matters because AI is not simply creating another technology niche. LinkedIn's research describes AI as one of the fastest-growing and highest-paying segments of the labour market, making access to those roles increasingly important to who benefits from the economic opportunities created by the technology.

Twelve-Hour Days Make Keeping Up Harder

For women who do enter the field, however, securing a role is only the beginning.

Putatunda says AI's pace of development can create an expectation that ambitious professionals must work beyond conventional hours simply to remain competitive.

'If you have very ambitious career goals in this field, there will be seasons when you work beyond normal hours,' she says. She described a culture of working 12-hour days to keep up as 'not uncommon', adding: 'I don't think there is always a neat shortcut around that than to put in the hours.'

That culture can create particular difficulties for workers with responsibilities outside the workplace.

Putatunda experienced that first-hand after taking four months of maternity leave. When she returned, she found that the technology landscape had changed substantially during her absence.

'I went on maternity leave for four months, and by the time I came back, there were completely different frameworks and levels of models,' she says.

Catching up was overwhelming and only became manageable with support from colleagues and a partner who shared childcare responsibilities equally.

'That is one way women get pushed out of AI,' Putatunda says, stressing that women 'don't lack the interest or ability to keep up' but 'may lack the infrastructure that makes keeping up possible.'

Her experience illustrates a particular challenge in a rapidly changing sector: returning after time away can mean having to catch up with a substantially different technical landscape. It does not, however, establish that maternity leave itself causes women to leave AI more broadly.

Women Face Greater Risk From AI Disruption

The irony is that women are also more heavily represented in some occupations that are vulnerable to automation.

LinkedIn's research indicates women tend to hold positions such as customer support that face greater exposure to AI-driven disruption. Its research also found that women are more likely than men to work in roles vulnerable to generative AI disruption, while women who move from AI-augmented roles are more likely than men to transition into AI-disrupted roles.

This creates a double challenge: women remain underrepresented in the AI roles being created while being more heavily represented in some existing roles that face greater exposure to AI disruption. LinkedIn says this means women are also at higher risk of job loss due to AI.

Brenda Darden Wilkerson, president of the women-focused non-profit organisation AnitaB.org, describes the situation as 'a sort of backsliding'.

Women account for about one-third of US technology roles, following years of efforts to increase representation across the sector. Yet women continue to leave technology at higher rates than men, with unsupportive working environments and limited opportunities for career progression among the factors cited for their departure. Accenture research found that 37 per cent of women surveyed cited company culture as the leading reason women abandon technology careers, while more inclusive workplace cultures were associated with substantially lower attrition.

That makes the current AI boom particularly consequential. If women remain underrepresented in higher-paying AI roles while being more heavily represented in occupations vulnerable to AI disruption, the existing gender gap could become harder to reverse.

Old Hiring Networks Create New Barriers

The rapid development of AI might appear to offer a fresh start. Few people can claim decades of experience with technologies that were created only recently, which in theory could create a more level playing field.

But women working in the sector say established hiring practices have followed them into the new industry.

Wilkerson says that although companies are recruiting at an intense pace, 'they're finding people through the same networks, the same referrals, the same filters that they've always used', adding that 'generally, that's not given women the same sort of exposure they should have.'

Urvashi Batra, chief executive and co-founder of AI platform Prioriwise, says she has encountered similar assumptions while seeking funding.

Batra says she and her male business partner found it easier to secure financial backing when he led their pitches, while she was sometimes dismissed despite being the co-founder and CEO of an AI company.

Such experiences suggest that the rapid evolution of AI has not necessarily eliminated the informal networks and assumptions that women say have hindered their progression in technology.

Support for Women Is Also Shrinking

The problem is compounded by a pullback in some diversity and inclusion initiatives.

Previous efforts to improve women's representation in technology often centred on mentoring, recruitment programmes and formal diversity targets. The Guardian reports that companies have aggressively scaled back diversity, equity and inclusion programmes in recent years, leaving fewer firms with institutional programmes designed to hire and promote women.

Felicia Newhouse, who founded the advocacy group AI Powered Women and has spent two decades working in technology product marketing, says the climate has made it harder to secure corporate backing for women-focused programmes.

She points to US Department of Justice actions targeting some corporate diversity practices and says major employers including Accenture, Deloitte, IBM and PayPal have faced multimillion-dollar settlements or resolutions involving allegations concerning race- or sex-based discrimination and diversity-related programmes.

The cases are not identical. The DOJ said Accenture, Deloitte and IBM agreed to pay millions of dollars to resolve allegations involving anti-discrimination requirements in federal contracts, while PayPal's $30 million (£24.86 million) settlement concerned a fair-lending investigation into a programme for Black and minority-owned businesses. The DOJ's announcements state that the claims resolved in the Accenture, Deloitte and IBM cases were allegations and did not constitute determinations of liability.

'It is getting harder to go into companies being called AI Powered Women,' Newhouse says, adding that advocates inside those companies are also struggling to maintain women-focused initiatives.

The consequences could extend well beyond representation figures.

Newhouse says the prospect of women falling further behind in the workforce 'keeps me awake at night', arguing that the issue concerns 'who captures a major new source of economic mobility'.

'The deepest risk is that a participation gap becomes a power gap,' she says.