According to a 2019 UNESCO report, women represent only 29% of science R&D positions globally and are already 25% less likely than men to know how to use digital technology for basic purposes.
The use of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies will affect women’s opportunities for work, and their position, status and treatment in the workplace.
One area where women are especially underrepresented is cybersecurity, Capacity asks what is the impact of AI integration in cyber on women and will it threaten potential inclusivity or help enable it?
So, let’s start with the facts, according to figures published by OECD, women in AI currently account for less than 25% of the workforce, which is a problem when it comes to diversity of thought developing it.
“For AI to truly serve all of humanity it must have input from all of humanity. This means a diverse workforce creating it and selecting the data it uses,” says Jennifer Cox, security engineering manager at Tenable.
“Governance of AI must regulate this inclusivity for creation of tools intended for mass markets as a means to remove human biases and ensure that AI serves all of humanity.”
In the world of cybersecurity, the use of AI is big opportunity but it also come with some threats “…including in amplifying bias, discrimination, and risks to safety in a whole range of sectors from healthcare to consumer, that an adversary can exploit,” says Madeline Cheah, principal security technologist at Cambridge Consultants.
“We should therefore make the best possible effort to ensure that everything in the use of AI, from training, to deployment, to integration with everyday systems considers everyone’s needs, from removal of unwanted bias, to upskilling as many women (and other diverse groups) as possible to ensure that we can deliver the AI solutions so needed to solve the urgent problems of both today and tomorrow,” she adds.
Merritt Baer, field CISO at Lacework, is firmly on team AI believing that, provided we have the aforementioned diversity in development and programming, the tool could be a game-changer when it comes to inclusivity in the cybersecurity space.
“… precisely because of its transformative power, I see potential for AI to enable inclusivity. For one, we can protect data and the underpinning networks better, because with API-driven work like cloud computing, we have fine-grained permissions and the ability to reason about them and limit them in an ongoing way,” she says.
“This matters, because more and better security is good for everyone, and especially vulnerable folks including women.”
Baer says that we already AI security use cases for things that benefit inclusivity rights such as AI used for content moderation, including nonconsensual pornography and child sexual abuse material, all areas that impact women as well as other vulnerable communities.
“If we can get more done–at a higher fidelity, and without real humans having to look at the material– that is good for society, and certainly for women,” says Baer.
Helen Masters, executive vice president and general manager of international sales at Ivanti says that points to research that suggests that the UN's International Labour Organisation (ILO) is concerned that women may be disproportionately impacted by AI.
“The ILO citied how clerical work has been a vehicle for increasing female employment, but now these roles are at the highest risk due to automation. In fact, as part of our own research at Ivanti, we found that 63% of IT Workers and 44% of office workers are concerned Generative AI will take their job in five years.”
Aside from the obvious like better education for women, workplace initiatives that nurture inclusive environments for women but she also points to something new, suggesting internal taskforces dedicated to ensuring that when AI is introduced, it’s enhancing jobs for all, rather than removing them.
“AI presents an exciting opportunity, but leaders need to actively address female and diversity fears. If they do so, they will finally fully open the door to fruitful cyber careers for women,” she says.
From recruitment standpoint, Kady Marriott, associate partner at WithYouWithMe says that skills-based hiring and the integration of AI are creating a huge opportunity for women in the field of cybersecurity – an industry she says has a pressing need to modernise recruitment practices given research from the International Information System Security Certification Consortium (ISC2) that indicates there to be a 3.4 million-person skills gap in the field, globally.
“Traditionally, recruitment has relied heavily on past experience and educational qualifications, often disadvantaging underrepresented groups, such as neurodiverse, military veterans and women,” she explains.
“However, the shift towards skills-based hiring prioritises a candidate's demonstrated abilities and potential over traditional credentials, mitigating unconscious bias in the hiring process.”
Despite the obvious advantages of this, Marriott says implementing a skills-first strategy requires a shift in HR practices and a broader change management program but “in doing so allowing the previously underserved to demonstrate their skills to unlock new opportunities”.
We leave the last word with Janet Robb, director of customer enablement at ANS who thinks that AI has the potential to disrupt the existing boys club and importance of things like mentoring and training, key in such a technical field.
“The lack of female representation risks pushing back all the progress that has been made recently in equality in tech. We don’t want to revert the bad old days of new tech just being for the boys,” she says.
“AI integration in cyber, and beyond, has the potential to create amazing opportunities for women. However, to achieve this we need to support those who want to enter the field to ensure they have equal access to these opportunities. Mentoring and training schemes are just a couple ways to ensure inclusivity within AI in cyber security.
Ultimately, she says its up to all of us and reminds us of the role of we all play in development of creating a more inclusive world of cybersecurity for women and AI seems to the tool that will move the needle.
“This disparity isn’t just the responsibility of technology and IT departments, but businesses on the whole to work together and ensure women are given the opportunities to keep up with AI advancements.”
