Women lag men in AI roles despite gains in education, says WEF

The World Economic Forum's 2026 Global Gender Gap Report reveals that women have achieved senior leadership positions in business and government that were rare in 2006, yet they remain underrepresented in high-impact roles, particularly in artificial intelligence (AI) sectors. Despite progress in education, women lag behind men in AI roles.

In AI occupations, women are primarily found in data annotation roles, which are often lower-paid, while occupying just 19.3% of AI engineer positions. The report highlights that women are disproportionately represented in these positions compared to non-AI firms, where they make up 36.6% of employees at individual contributor levels and 25.3%-27.7% of top management roles.

The Global Gender Gap Report, now in its 20th edition, tracks 145 economies across four dimensions: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment. The gender gap globally stands at 69.2% closed, a 0.4 percentage point increase from the previous year. However, political empowerment, which has seen the most significant gains, is now the dimension showing the clearest signs of reversal, scoring lower than in 2016.

To accelerate progress, the World Economic Forum emphasizes the need for governments and employers to learn from successful policies and implement them more quickly.