According to the Women in the Workplace 2025 report, corporate commitment to gender equity is eroding just as a new, decisive barrier is emerging—the AI divide (Krivkovich et al., 2025). This is an active restructuring of the workplace that threatens to cement existing inequities for a generation. For first-generation female professionals (FGPs), the data shows a critical inflection point: mastery of artificial intelligence is no longer a technical specialty; it is a core component of leadership literacy and career survival.
The McKinsey report uncovers a major encouragement gap. At the entry level, only 21% of women are encouraged by managers to use AI tools, compared to 33% of men. This early divergence is catastrophic. The report notes that when employees are encouraged to use AI, they are over 50% more likely to do so, directly accelerating their skill acquisition and visibility. This isn’t just about missing a tool but about being systematically excluded from the new language of productivity, strategy, and innovation.
For the first-gen professional, this gap is compounded. Without inherited networks of tech-savvy mentors, we rely on structured, organizational support for skill development. When that support is biased or absent, the chasm widens exponentially. The report confirms that women, already grappling with the “broken rung” and a sponsorship desert, are now at risk of being sidelined from the most transformative business tool since the internet.
The AI Gulf: From Disadvantage to Obsolescence
This AI encouragement gap creates a vicious cycle:
- Lower Encouragement → Lower Adoption → Growing Skill Deficit → Reduced Competitiveness for Promotions.
- This deficit is framed as a personal lack of initiative, instead of a systemic failure of support.
As AI reshapes roles, this early deficit doesn’t only stall advancement. It can render entire career trajectories obsolete. The report directly links managerial encouragement to AI use, and AI use to essential skill building. To be discouraged from AI is to be discouraged from future leadership.
The RISE Fellowship Response: Building AI Fluency into the Foundation
This precise, data-identified crisis is why AI is not a sidebar in the Executive Insider RISE Fellowship. It is holistically infused throughout our pedagogy across all four tiers. We translate the report’s alarming data into a proactive, mastery-based curriculum.
Our approach recognizes that for FGPs, AI cannot be another “thing to learn.” It must be the lens and lever through which all other professional skills are amplified and executed. This is how we close the encouragement gap by design:
- In Tier 1 (Career Ownership): We teach Fellows to use AI for energy stewardship and reducing invisible labor. It’s about automating administrative overhead to reclaim mental bandwidth for strategic thinking.
- In Tier 2 (Strategic Navigation): Fellows use AI to simulate high-stakes negotiations, map complex organizational networks, and refine executive communications. They build confidence in environments where they have historically received less live practice.
- In Tier 3 (Leading with Impact): AI becomes a tool for modeling sustainable team practices, prototyping systemic solutions, and measuring the enduring impact of their leadership—validating their work in data-driven terms.
- In Tier 4 (Community Builders): Graduates learn to leverage AI to scale their mentorship, amplify their advocacy, and safeguard their own sustainability as they reinvest in the next generation.
We equip Fellows not just to use AI, but to command it. To understand its biases, to prompt it strategically, and to wield it as a tool for personal agency and systemic change. This is the antidote to being passive subjects of technological shift; it is how we become its architects.
Your Move: From Targeted to Technologically Sovereign
The corporate landscape might be deprioritizing structured support, but the imperative for AI fluency is only intensifying. The choice is clear: accept the growing disadvantage documented in the report, or proactively build the skill that will define the next era of leadership.
The RISE Fellowship is built on this frontier. It is a direct, evidence-based intervention into the AI encouragement gap. Here, you are not just encouraged—you are required, trained, and empowered to integrate AI into every facet of your professional identity. You will gain the literacy to dissect its biases, the practical skill to deploy it for leverage, and the strategic vision to make sure it serves your goals.
The McKinsey report reveals a system preparing to leave women, especially first-gen women, behind in the AI revolution. Our mission is to see to it that you are not left behind—you are leading it. The most powerful way to close a gap is to build a bridge so advanced that it redefines the landscape. Your future leadership depends on your technological sovereignty. And your resilience will get you there.
Sources
Krivkovich, A., Goldstein, D., & McConnell, M. (2025, December 9). Women in the workplace 2025 [Report]. McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.org. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/women-in-the-workplace
