How SA women are driving the AI workforce revolution

Image source: DC Studio from Magnific.com

AI is changing how companies recruit, communicate, analyse information and get everyday work done. For South African women, who have historically faced steep barriers to economic opportunity, understanding these tools is becoming part of staying competitive in a changing labour market.

AI skill set

The latest Pnet Job Market Trends Report suggests women are already recognising this. Women accounted for 32% of professionals listing AI skills on their CVs in July 2026, up from 25% in July 2023. Men still represent the majority, at 67%, but the gap is narrowing.

The detail is even more interesting. Pnet's analysis of more than 1.5 million jobseeker profiles found women leading adoption of several generative AI tools, particularly those tied to content and design.

Women made up about 70% of professionals who added tools like Adobe Firefly, Canva AI and Midjourney to their CVs over the past three years, and 60% of those listing ChatGPT as a skill, compared with 39% of men.

These numbers complicate a familiar assumption. The conversation about gender and technology usually focuses on women's underrepresentation in technical and specialised fields, and that's a real problem that shouldn't be minimised. But it's equally true that women are engaging with AI in large numbers, especially in the everyday professional work where the technology is landing first.

Adoption

AI no longer belongs only to software engineers and data scientists.

A communications professional can use it to analyse coverage and spot trends. A small-business owner can use it for market research and admin. A student can use it to support learning, and a creative can use it to iterate on ideas faster.

That shift matters for South Africa because the country cannot afford another skills divide layered on top of the ones it already has: high youth unemployment alongside employers who say they can't find the skills they need.

If access to AI literacy stays concentrated among people who already have economic advantages, the transition could deepen those problems. But it could also broaden participation.

AI literacy is another way for jobseekers to show they're adaptable, a productivity boost for people already employed, and a cost-lowering tool for entrepreneurs who used to pay for things like basic marketing content they can now draft themselves.

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Opportunity and risk

The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report points to the scale of this shift. AI, big data and technological literacy are among the fastest-growing skills in demand through 2030.

For South African women, that's both an opportunity and a risk.

The opportunity is real: AI can lower barriers that used to require money or technical training most people didn't have. The risk is that having access to a tool doesn't automatically translate into economic power.

A woman may know how to use ChatGPT and still struggle to access finance, reliable internet or a professional network. She may make her own work more efficient while remaining excluded from the senior positions where decisions about technology and strategy get made.

Use vs creation

This is why the conversation about women and AI needs to go beyond adoption. It's good news that more women are using AI, but the harder question is how many are building AI products, founding technology companies, leading digital transformation, and shaping the policy that governs it.

That distinction matters because AI isn't neutral.

The systems being built now will influence recruitment, lending, education, healthcare and advertising for years. If women are absent from the teams designing and deploying them, existing inequalities risk simply being rebuilt inside new technology.

This is a concern Unesco has already raised, pointing to the underrepresentation of women in AI research and the risk of gender bias getting baked into AI systems.

Closing this gap can't just mean teaching women to use existing tools. It has to mean creating real pathways into AI's development, governance and commercialisation.

There's a business case here too, not just an HR one.

Diverse teams bring different lived experience to how technology gets built and rolled out, which matters especially in a country as unequal as South Africa, where a tool that works well for a connected professional in Sandton may not work at all for a small-business owner in a rural community.

The people designing these systems need to understand that gap, and that means the women building AI capability shouldn't only be found in universities and large corporations.

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Increasing accessibility and training

Skills development has to reach women in small businesses, townships, rural communities and public institutions, and it has to reach beyond IT departments too.

Employees in communications, HR, finance, legal and operations are already encountering these tools at work and deserve structured training rather than being left to figure it out alone.

The same is true in universities: AI literacy shouldn't be treated as the property of computer science students when graduates in business, law, education and public relations are walking into workplaces where it's already embedded.

None of this means the gender gap in AI has been solved. But the Pnet numbers are a starting point worth taking seriously: evidence that women are already moving, adding skills, experimenting with tools, building AI into creative and everyday work.

The task now is making sure that momentum doesn't stop at adoption. Government needs to expand access to infrastructure and training. Businesses need to invest in it and open up AI-related decision-making. Universities need to make literacy accessible across disciplines.

Break the cycle

South Africa cannot afford to repeat old patterns in a new technological era.

If women were historically excluded from certain industries and opportunities, AI shouldn't become another space where that exclusion is simply reproduced in new form.

Women should not simply use the AI economy. They should help build it, lead it and decide what the future of work looks like.