Gender Parity in the Intelligent Age 2025

To address this initial gap, strategies seeking to transition more female STEM graduates into STEM roles and industries have been a staple of tech- focused economies. A trend documented in the 2023 edition of the Global Gender Gap Report showed that a larger cohort of female STEM graduates entered STEM employment every year. However, their retention is not as promising. As Figure 8 indicates, the first year in the workforce carries a significant “drop off” for women in STEM employment: women graduating in 2017 accounted for 35.5% of STEM graduates, but only 29.6% of STEM job entrants in 2018.The “school-to-work” transition is but one of the many stages in the professional life of STEM workers where gender gaps are a glaring obstacle to talent strategies. The rise to industry leadership is another. Presented as the “drop to the top”, this metric shows how women transition into STEM leadership roles in lower proportions than men (Figure 9). In 2024, women held 24.4% of STEM managerial positions in STEM but only 12.2% of STEM C-suite level roles. This contrasts with women’s representation in non-STEM roles, which in 2024 declined from 39.6% at the managerial level to 24.3% in executive leadership. From the start, and throughout the entire career cycle, the STEM industry’s ability to attract and retain female talent is feeble: men are overrepresented at every stage of the professional ladder. The gender disparity in STEM has persisted for decades, with incremental change taking a long time to reflect on opportunities. While AI remains part of the broader STEM ecosystem – textured by many of its structural obstacles – it is not yet fully rigid in its gender dynamics. AI is a much younger and more dynamic field, creating a window for intervention that can foster greater gender equity before biases become fully institutionalized. One example of this is the rapid uptake of AI skilling. With technology adoption expected to play a growing role in economic transformation, AI and big data skills are increasingly attracting employer attention. In 2022, fewer than one-third of employers surveyed in the Future of Jobs Survey believed these skills were essential for their organizations. By 2024, this share had risen to 45%.6 What the survey also revealed is that over three- quarters of business executives view AI reskilling and upskilling as the primary strategy for adapting to its growing impact, making it the most widely adopted approach across industries. This aligns with findings from the Forum’s 2024 Executive Opinion Survey, which suggested that business leaders see accelerating education and talent development as key objectives for driving innovation and shaping industry policy. Rising to meet this demand is a growing cohort of AI talent – workers with AI engineering and literacy skills across industries and occupations.7 For both, we observe rapid adoption of AI skills and a persistent gender disparity that is, nonetheless, narrowing. Data on AI engineering (Figures 10a and 10b) indicates that the share of LinkedIn members who list AI engineering skills in 75 economies has rapidly expanded from 2018-2025. The median change across economies over the last year was 0 Manager Entry Senior Director VP CXO 20 40 60Share of women (%) non-STEM STEM"Drop to the top" in STEM vs non-STEM FIGURE 9 Source LinkedIn Economic Graph Research InstituteNote “Drop to the top” refers to the widening of the gender gap as workers progress into leadership roles. Gender Parity in the Intelligent Age 14