You’ve worked too hard to let a tool hold you back.
What the Article Actually Says
Harvard Business School Associate Prof. Rembrand Koning and colleagues (including researchers from UC Berkeley and Stanford) analyzed 18 studies covering more than 140,000 workers globally and found that women adopt generative AI tools at a rate 25% lower than men on average (Blanding, 2025). Between November 2022 and May 2024, women made up only 42% of ChatGPT’s monthly web users—and just 27% of its app downloads.
The driving force behind that gap isn’t lack of access or ability. It’s fear of judgment. Koning’s research found that women often avoid AI because they worry using it looks like “cheating” or signals a lack of expertise—a concern men report far less frequently (Blanding, 2025). Even in a Kenya study of 17,000 entrepreneurs where equal AI access was explicitly provided, women remained 13% less likely to engage with ChatGPT. The article concludes with a clear prescription: companies must build psychologically safe cultures where AI experimentation is openly encouraged and never penalized.
The AI Penalty: Why Playing It Safe With Generative AI (GenAI) Might Be the Riskiest Career Move You Make
There’s a moment many first-generation female professionals (FGPs) know well—that split-second hesitation before speaking up in a meeting, submitting a bold idea, or trying something new at work. The voice that whispers: What if they think I don’t really know what I’m doing?
That same voice, it turns out, may now be keeping us away from one of the most powerful career tools of our generation: generative artificial intelligence.
New research out of Harvard Business School reveals that women are adopting generative AI tools at a rate 25% lower than men on average, even when those tools are freely available and proven to boost productivity. As Blanding (2025) reports, Harvard Business School Associate Professor Rembrand Koning analyzed 18 studies covering more than 140,000 workers across multiple countries and found a consistent, troubling pattern: women shy away from AI—not because they can’t use it, but because they’re afraid of what happens if others think they are using it.
Let that sink in for a second. We’re not avoiding AI because it doesn’t work. We’re avoiding it because we’re worried we’ll be judged for needing it.
The Judgment Trap Is Real—and It’s Costing Us
Here’s what the research actually found: women, far more than men, worry that using AI-generated content signals a lack of expertise—that getting the right answer with ChatGPT’s help means they “cheated” (Blanding, 2025). Koning puts it plainly: “Women face greater penalties in being judged as not having expertise in different fields” (as cited in Blanding, 2025).
Sound familiar? If you’re a first-gen professional woman (FGP), it probably does. We’ve often entered workplaces where we had to prove ourselves twice as hard, twice as fast, just to be taken seriously. We’ve learned—sometimes painfully—that any shortcut, any mistake, any visible gap can be weaponized against us. So we stay cautious. We stay careful. We don’t reach for tools that might make us look less capable.
But here’s the brutal truth: that caution has a cost.
A 2024 survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that half of men had used generative AI in the previous 12 months, compared with only about a third of women (Blanding, 2025). Between November 2022 and May 2024, women made up just 42% of ChatGPT’s monthly web users—and an even more striking 27% of its app downloads (Blanding, 2025). Your male colleagues are using these tools. They’re getting faster. They’re producing more. And in a workplace that already doesn’t always see your contributions the way it should, that’s a gap we can’t afford.
Productivity Is the Surface. Power Is the Goal.
Koning identifies three major consequences if the AI gender gap persists (Blanding, 2025):
- Women may fall behind in their careers. Workers who aren’t using productivity-boosting technology risk being outpaced by colleagues who are—widening an already stubborn wage and opportunity gap.
- Businesses and the economy lose growth potential. Systemic underuse of AI by women means entire sectors of talent and innovation are being left on the table.
- AI itself becomes less equitable. Large language models improve based on user prompts. If women aren’t using these tools, the AI learns predominantly from men—and risks encoding gender bias into its very foundation.
That third point matters deeply for us. We didn’t fight to earn our seats at the table only to let the next technological revolution be built without our voices shaping it.
What This Means for You, Right Now
Whether you’re two years into your career or 25 years in, you’re already navigating systems that weren’t designed with you in mind. That’s the invisible disadvantage we don’t always get to name out loud. But AI, when you make it yours, doesn’t have to be another barrier. It can be scaffolding.
Here’s what “making it yours” actually looks like in practice:
- Use AI to draft, then refine. Let it write the first version of a memo, proposal, or report. Your expertise shows up in how you edit, contextualize, and elevate it—that’s where your professional judgment lives, and no one can take that from you.
- Use AI to prepare, not perform. Run your next salary negotiation talking points through ChatGPT. Ask it to poke holes in your pitch. Use it to rehearse the hard conversations before they happen in real life.
- Use AI to expand bandwidth, not replace brainpower. You don’t outsource your thinking. You amplify it. There’s a difference, and knowing that difference is part of what makes you a stronger professional.
And if you’re more experienced in your career—if you’re the one in the room who’s been doing this work for decades—know this: AI doesn’t invalidate what you know. It extends it. Your institutional knowledge, your relationships, your hard-won judgment? Those are the things AI can’t replicate. What it can do is handle the administrative weight so you can focus on what only you can do.
Why This Matters for FGPs (First-Gen Female Professionals)
Koning’s research strongly recommends that companies build cultures of psychological safety, where AI experimentation is normalized and nobody’s judged for trying (Blanding, 2025). That’s the right prescription. And we need workplaces to get there.
But FGPs can’t always afford to wait. We don’t have the same informal networks, the same built-in sponsorship systems, or the same safety nets that make it easier to take workplace risks when your family has navigated those rooms before you. That means we sometimes have to build our own psychological safety—within ourselves, within our communities, and within trusted circles of women who understand the stakes.
That’s what we’re here for at Executive Insider. We’re building the inner circle you deserve, where AI literacy is a skill we develop together, in community, without judgment.
Your Next Step
This week, commit to one experiment. Open Claude (it’s free), and give it a real work task: a project summary, a professional email you’ve been dreading, or a list of questions to prep for your next performance review. Don’t think of it as relying on AI. Think of it as doing what every ambitious professional does: using every available tool to do your best work.
Because the real career risk isn’t using AI. It’s being the last one in the room who didn’t.
Sources
Blanding, M. (2025, February 20). Women are avoiding AI. Will their careers suffer? Harvard Business School. https://www.library.hbs.edu/working-knowledge/women-are-avoiding-using-artificial-intelligence-can-that-hurt-their-careers
