Are AI tools helping us move beyond longstanding stereotypes or are they giving them a new platform?
This past Sunday, the New York Times ran an article, “Marissa Mayer Ran Yahoo. She’s Back With A.I. She Thinks Women Will Love,” emphasizing the concerns of gender imbalance in AI, from women’s underrepresentation in leadership to the gendered stereotypes these tools may reinforce.
These concerns extend beyond how AI tools are designed to how they advise users. In the recent article, “AI Advice Reinforces Traditional Gender Roles,” researchers Nadja Born, Jared R. Curhan, and Hannah Riley Bowles found that AI career advice was not neutral. Even when candidates were equally qualified, the AI provided different recommendations based on gender cues. Most concerning, women were given lower salary ranges than men and were more often encouraged to prioritize flexibility and caregiving benefits, while men were encouraged to prioritize financial rewards and career advancement.
This research particularly resonated with me because it echoes concerns I raised in my 2017 article, Negotiating While Female. There, I challenged persistent myths about women and negotiation, including the idea that women do not or cannot negotiate as effectively as men.
The good news is that, in the last decade, many stereotypes about gender and negotiation continue to be questioned and debunked. Yet, as more people turn to AI for career advice, we need to ask how these recommendations might shape negotiations and reinforce existing power imbalances. AI advice that appears personalized and helpful may instead reproduce the gender stereotypes that have limited expectations about women’s careers. How unfortunate would it be that AI moves us backward instead of forward?
