By Ana Castillo Leska y Raquel Trigo
The adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) does not occur uniformly between women and men. Women adopt and use AI tools at a slower pace, particularly in productive, business, and technological contexts, partly due to unequal access to training, time, capital, networks, and opportunities.
Recent estimates from the World Economic Forum indicate that women represent between 25% and 30% of the global workforce in artificial intelligence, which influences who designs and develops these emerging technologies.
Artificial intelligence is no longer a technology reserved for specialists. Today it supports, assists, and amplifies capabilities in everyday tasks: learning, creating, entrepreneurship, organizing, producing, and increasingly, making decisions. For example, a woman managing a small shop or business in any city across Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) can use AI-based tools to analyze customer behavior, adjust prices, plan communications, or prioritize investments. AI does not make decisions for her, but it reduces complexity, organizes information, and strengthens her decision-making capacity without requiring advanced technical knowledge.
In many contexts across the region, AI is already integrated into daily life through services, digital platforms, and recommendation systems. When a technology becomes embedded in everyday life, the question of gender becomes a structural one. What matters is how these systems are designed, used, and governed.
The AI systems being deployed today, increasingly integrated into decision-making processes, can become powerful tools to accelerate capabilities, reduce frictions, and expand opportunities—even in contexts where gaps persist.
In Latin America and the Caribbean, the adoption of artificial intelligence is advancing within a context of heterogeneous digital capabilities and innovation ecosystems that are still consolidating. Our study, fAIr Tech Radar, highlights that the region is rapidly incorporating these technologies.
From this perspective, incorporating a gender lens in AI is not only about closing adoption gaps. It is about designing systems that work better in the real world: with more complete information, clearer objectives, and more sustainable impact.
“This is particularly relevant because AI is not neutral. It learns from the past, and that past has been deeply shaped by gender biases and stereotypes. If there is no conscious intervention, systems tend to reproduce—and even amplify—those patterns,” said Álvaro Pena, UTEC. The key question is not only how to avoid bias, but also what realities we show to AI and from which human decisions it is designed, trained, and deployed.
At the same time, recent analyses of the future of work highlight a central point: AI is not—and will not be—a field exclusive to traditional engineers. Emerging professional profiles combine artificial intelligence with sustainability, design, human experience, governance, and decision-making in complex environments. In many of these intersections, women already bring relevant experience and capabilities.
Various studies agree that this technological transition will have a profound impact on the skills required in the labor market. The Future of Jobs Report from the World Economic Forum indicates that nearly 44% of core job skills will change in the coming years as a result of automation and artificial intelligence.
At the same time, risks remain real. Many of the sectors most exposed to automation in the region involve routine tasks and have high female participation. This reinforces the importance of strengthening training, digital skills, and participation in technology development so that more women can benefit from the opportunities that artificial intelligence creates.
“That is why the focus should not only be on adoption, but on critical AI literacy. It is not only about learning how to use tools, but about understanding what AI does, what data it uses, what decisions it amplifies, and—just as importantly—when to use it and when not to. This capacity for informed decision-making repositions people—and particularly women—not only as users of technology but as active decision-makers,” said Álvaro Peña, UTEC.
Education plays a central role, but it does not act alone. Building this future requires collaboration among the public sector, private sector, academia, and the entrepreneurial ecosystem. It also requires a regional perspective on how knowledge-intensive jobs are incorporated and how to ensure women are not left behind in this transition.
IDB Lab promotes an agenda that connects innovation with development. Through initiatives such as fAIrLAC, we work to ensure that the adoption of artificial intelligence is strategic, responsible, and aligned with the realities of Latin America and the Caribbean.
Artificial intelligence is already among us—not as a future promise, but as part of everyday infrastructure.
The opportunity now is to use it to expand capabilities, strengthen decision-making, and build new development possibilities across the region. How we design and use AI today will define how competitive, sustainable, and prosperous that future will be for Latin America and the Caribbean.