'Only 30% AI professionals women, 16% hold research roles': UN Women calls for inclusive design

New Delhi: Women account for just 30 per cent of AI professionals worldwide and hold only 16 per cent of AI research roles, UN Women said on Tuesday, calling for greater female participation in building artificial intelligence tools to better reflect women's needs in health, finance, climate resilience, and safety.

Speaking at the launch of the AI Casebook on Gender and Agriculture at India AI Summit here, UN Women Regional Director for Asia Pacific Christine Arab said the under representation of women in AI development was creating systemic bias in the technology.

Arab noted that a "persistent design gap" remains globally, warning that fewer women building AI systems means fewer products that reflect women's realities.

"When women are missing from design tables, the test labs, the term sheets -- bias doesn't emerge by accident. It becomes the default," she said.

Arab praised India for its efforts to address the gender gap in AI, saying the country "stands among the very few globally who are taking this seriously," adding that no country has yet done this well.

"We are all -- as a globe -- still learning. And that is precisely what makes what the Government of India is doing so significant," she said.

Arab also flagged the threat AI poses to women's livelihoods, citing a joint UN Women and LinkedIn analysis that found that around 80 per cent of women across Asia and the Pacific work in job categories flagged as "augmented or disrupted".

She said the outcome will depend on policy choices. "With the right skilling and protections, augmentation can be a springboard, not a setback -- and the opportunity is enormous," she said.

She urged the governments, policymakers, investors and researchers to read, fund and scale the cases featured in the casebook, describing them as "not just stories" but "solutions". "AI must be written by all of society. Not just by the select few," she noted.

The AI casebook presents 26 deployed and scalable AI solutions focused on improving crop planning, strengthening farm operations, expanding market access and enhancing financial resilience for farmers.