At a time when diversity, women’s progress and inclusion are facing pushback, this year’s theme for International Women’s Day is more than just a motto to eat off a cupcake.
Now, more than ever we need momentum in the right direction through decisive action made possible by steps taken every day.
In the space of AI, women make up just 22 per cent of professionals worldwide. At the executive level, it gets even worse.
But those who have made it up the ranks and are throwing down the ladder, want more women to follow them, as you’ll hear in this week’s episode of AI Unlocked, a special series supported by Salesforce and produced by Women’s Agenda.
Salesforce ANZ Senior Vice President of Innovation, AI and Customer Advisory, Rowena Westphalen, has been one of the few women working on the frontlines of the AI revolution.
“I couldn’t be more emphatic on how important it is for everyone, but particularly women and underrepresented minorities to really lean in to AI and the AI conversation,” she says.
“We’re busy shaping today what AI means for our community, for our businesses and our societies. And we need diverse minds and voices to influence that.
“Technology is neither good or bad – it’s a tool and it’s how you use it.
“We have a choice to turn this into a tool that creates opportunities and adds good things to our societies and our communities.”
Considering many of the inequalities and gender-based disparities in our world, it’s no surprise that some of these are being replicated in the digital.
But as Girl Geek Academy CEO Sarah Moran points out, women are making an incredible impact despite these barriers.
Speaking on the podcast, the long-term advocate for women and girls in tech says the fact that people of different backgrounds and skillsets are giving it a go and seeing results – is something worth celebrating.
She hopes this will encourage more women and girls to try it out.
“What we are seeing is acceleration and improvements of businesses that women already owned that are being supported by AI tools,” she says.
“Women will be able to celebrate the acceleration of what they’re able to achieve within a business.
“And I think that is just as much of a women’s power gain as it is to creating a business from scratch. I would love to see more businesses built that are absolutely pure AI or beginning from scratch.
“But as we’ve seen in technology waves before us, we can’t put unreasonable expectations on women to achieve that.
“We’re playing the hand that we’ve been dealt. And I’ll take the wins where we can get them.
“So I highly encourage, if there’s anyone listening who has a daughter, a niece, or someone who genuinely doesn’t know what they want to be – go and build cool stuff with AI.”
Women in business, early entrepreneurs and leaders are bolstering what they can achieve by embracing AI.
One New Zealand’s Chief Data and AI Director Summer Collins says tools like Salesforce’s Agentforce are transforming how her teams operate.
“We are seeing that that is going to be the future,” she says.
“We think agentic AI and traditional machine learning AI can ensure that our teams at the frontline are spending less time delving and understanding and diagnosing customer issues, and more time in front of customers helping them find the solutions.”
Collins says the most important thing is to ‘have an open mind’ and make a start.
“The first step is just to start using it,” she says.
“You can only learn about a technology if you start to understand it, particularly this type of novel technology that is unlike any that we’ve seen before.
“And you know many people are talking about this being like the introduction of the internet.
“The way that people learn the internet was actually building websites, starting to use it themselves, and then understanding personally how this was going to help their lives.”
In the final episode of the special podcast series AI Unlocked, Collins joins other experts in the industry to share practical ways to start experimenting with AI tools, products and apps.
Through insights on their personal journeys with AI, they share how they keep ahead of the curve and continue to build their knowledge in this rapidly evolving space.
As an important reminder this International Women’s Day, big change happens with small steps taken every day – and the same applies for your journey with AI.
Feature image: Sarah Moran, Girl Geek Academy.