Margaret Spence argues that women in factory and clerical roles are being left out of AI reskilling. She cites that 99% of development opportunities are restricted and women are denied advancement 9 out of 10 times when leaders make those calls. She calls for open-access training so women can participate in the AI future.
Here's a critical question: Who gets reskilled? Who gets left behind? How do you equitably allocate training and development to meet the AI future? Where are the women who are totally invisible right now? Let me tell you where they are. They're on your factory floors. They're in your manufacturing plants. They're in your clerical positions. They are in the low-level roles that we expect the work to be done, but we never see the individual who is inside of those roles. So one of the first questions that I want you to think about as we go through the process today is where are the invisible women? And that is the first question. The bigger question that I want you to really contemplate when it comes to women and women's leadership development and women's impact in the workforce is, is learning gated or is it open access? And this is a critical question. 99% of learning for women is gated. 99%. There's only 1% of learning that's not gated for women. It is the things that you say, Okay, you need to have PowerPoint or you need to learn how to use Microsoft or you need to learn how to be a good customer service rep or you need to be able to handle, you know, bad customers. But when it comes to the development process, we still ask women to go to a leader who in themselves may not be connected, who may be a lousy leader, and we ask that individual to make a decision about a woman's future based on their current dysfunction. And 9 out of 10 times, a woman gets told no for development.
