UN Women Launches New AI Hub to Put Women’s Rights at Heart of Digital Future

Women and women’s rights organizations are also expected to gain a stronger voice in shaping the policies, rules and technologies that define AI’s future.

Artificial intelligence is changing how people find work, communicate, use public services and exercise their rights, giving the people who build and control it considerable influence over everyday life. Women remain underrepresented in those roles: men hold nearly eight in 10 AI jobs and almost nine in 10 senior leadership positions shaping the technology, according to UN Women. Its newly launched Digital, Innovation and AI Hub seeks to bring women's experiences, expertise and rights into decisions that will determine how these technologies serve society.

The launch comes as world leaders gather in New York for the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly, where AI features prominently in discussions about economic transformation, employment, development, warfare and international peace and security. Women and girls, including the consequences these changes could have for their rights and opportunities, remain largely absent from those conversations, raising a basic question about whose lives are being considered as governments and businesses decide what comes next.

The Cost of Leaving Women Out

The consequences of that exclusion are already visible in research cited by UN Women. A global analysis of 133 AI systems found that 44 per cent demonstrated gender bias, showing that unequal treatment is a problem within existing technology. For women navigating systems that fail to account for their realities, the concern reaches beyond representation in the workplace to whether the technology itself treats them fairly.

Online abuse adds another dimension to the problem. Nearly one in four women human rights defenders, activists and journalists surveyed by UN Women reported experiencing AI-assisted online violence, according to its research on violence against women in the public sphere. The finding concerns these surveyed groups specifically, exposing risks faced by women whose work involves speaking publicly, defending rights and holding powerful people accountable.

Bringing Women Into Decisions About AI

The Hub will bring together researchers, governments, technology companies, AI experts and women's rights organizations to build evidence about how emerging technologies affect women and girls. That work will support UN Member States in developing digital and AI policies that respond to gender inequalities and benefit society as a whole. Collaboration with technology companies will focus on embedding gender equality principles into the design and governance of their technologies, making those considerations part of how systems are developed and overseen.

Women and women's rights organizations are also expected to gain a stronger voice in shaping the policies, rules and technologies that define AI's future. The Hub will strengthen the UN system's capacity to address these issues and put gender equality at the centre of digital governance, connecting research with the institutions responsible for turning evidence into decisions.

Equality Means Having Power Over the Future

Sima Bahous, UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women, warned that excluding women from AI's design and governance risks carrying today's inequalities into tomorrow's systems. "AI can deepen gender inequality or help overcome it," she said, placing responsibility on the engineers, companies, investors and governments making those choices now. UN Women's message at UNGA81 links representation directly to power: technology is reshaping economic, social and political influence, making women's rights, voices, needs and perspectives essential to its direction.

The Hub forms part of UN Women's broader work on gender equality and women's empowerment during rapid technological change, contributing to international efforts to ensure digital transformation supports inclusive, sustainable development and respects human rights.