“Wherever AI creates speed, it also creates risk. The Board’s task is to ensure one does not outrun the other.”
Women Board Directors have a particular edge when Boards consider the implications of AI on their Business. They bring unique perspectives and valuable contributions to Board discussions on AI’s impact. Their presence enhances the Board’s ability to address the rapidly emerging and complex influence of AI on the organisation.
The female Directors’ advantage in AI deliberations emerges from their behavioural focus and often being more attuned to ethical considerations and the risks of AI bias from drawing on a strong understanding of human capital and workforce impacts. They are more likely to challenge assumptions in algorithmic models and promote broader, system-level thinking around Strategy, Culture, and Governance. Their focus on Trust, Reputation, and Societal expectations leads to safer, more responsible, and competitive AI Governance aligned with long-term value creation.
““While men may overestimate control and women may overestimate risk, their combined input leads to stronger oversight, better fairness controls and a more realistic approach to AI Strategy.””
Applying this diversity of views and perspectives improves Board AI Governance. While men may overestimate control and women may overestimate risk, their combined input leads to stronger oversight, better fairness controls and a more realistic approach to AI Strategy. Boards with women are more likely to raise ethical issues early, question workforce impacts, and push for transparency and explainability, complementing the technical and operational focus often brought by men.
Boards with greater gender diversity shift from a “tech-first” to a “human-first” approach to AI Governance. They advocate for stronger guardrails, transparency, and stakeholder inclusion, and focus on responsible AI adoption and workforce transition.
However, in a strange dichotomy, despite their contributions, the very introduction of AI threatens women’s access to Board roles as it can reinforce barriers to Board participation. AI-driven hiring and assessment systems can perpetuate biases, disadvantaging female candidates. If not properly governed, AI can replicate historical biases such as male-heavy Leadership CV structures, in Executive Search, Leadership Assessment and CV ranking. Additionally, AI-driven KPIs which give prominence to sales, productivity and network metrics can perpetuate biased assumptions that structurally disadvantage women in talent pools. Consequently, it is very important to facilitate rigorous review of the AI systems algorithms which ‘make’ these ‘decisions’.
““The emergence of AI has created additional biases which dampen the ability of Women to succeed in acquiring the ‘Tech’ World capabilities which would be effective in Board roles.””
The emergence of AI has created additional biases which dampen the ability of Women to succeed in acquiring the ‘Tech’ World capabilities which would be effective in Board roles. Even where Women are involved in the especially Male dominated AI World, their capabilities are often steered toward “responsible AI” roles rather than Strategic or Commercial AI positions, limiting their influence in value-creation areas and consequent ‘usefulness’ to the Board. We need to ensure that the ‘Tech’ and Leadership pipelines, which are currently heavily Male-dominated, are reviewed and analysed regularly to improve female access and development in these increasingly important technical roles. If we continue to reinforce the Male dominance in this sector, it will reduce even further the pool of Technical-AI-expert Female candidates for the Board and Senior Leadership roles.
The current situation is that many Boards find themselves to be ‘Tech lite’ due to the general shortage of ‘Tech Able’ Directors, leading to a narrow dependency on one Board Member or reliance on External Advisors. In this context Women have the opportunity to facilitate a special edge in the AI debate and challenge on Boards, by pro-actively addressing the weakness of ‘Tech lite’ Boards. They have the opportunity to reduce this by advancing their own and whole Board learning to create a more informed competence on ‘Technical’ issues, enhancing decision making on emerging AI questions, which are fundamentally important to the whole Business.
Experience and research shows that Women Directors tend to be more proactive and disciplined in taking up new learning and development in Technical areas, while men often overestimate their existing Tech knowledge. Across multiple Board-Effectiveness Studies (FTSE, ASX, S&P), Women Directors show significantly stronger patterns of, proactive learning (especially on Digital, AI, Cyber, Data), seeking structured development, attending external seminars at higher rates, requesting deeper explanations rather than relying on shorthand, engaging with Management Experts in a more collaborative and curious way. Women learn faster, ask deeper questions, and close Technical gaps more reliably, while men often assume they already understand enough—and that assumption itself is a Risk.
Men on Boards often overestimate their Technical competence. This well-documented behavioural pattern, leads Men to express higher confidence in their Tech understanding, overclaiming to be “Tech savvy” and underestimating emerging Technical Risk and complexity. They tend to skip foundational training, rely on “broad intuition” rather than Technical reading and participate less fully in Board education sessions if they believe they already know the topic. This can lead to a narrower scope for informed debate and discussion overly focused on Technical feasibility, cost, competitive advantage and operational limits.
This is classic overconfidence bias, reinforced by historic dominance of Men in Senior Roles, Cultural expectations of Executive Authority and social reward for decisive rather than cautious behaviour. The outcome is an expression and appearance of confidence but, not necessarily more Technically proficiency than their female peers. In this context Women Directors provide Boards with the opportunity and catalyst to meet the challenges of keeping up with the fast-moving and all-encompassing World of AI. A strong and vigorous ‘Tech’ educated and gender-diverse Board adopts more Responsible and Strategically aligned AI systems, with better Risk Management, fewer blind spots, and stronger Organisational oversight.
AI is fundamentally changing Business Models, Markets and the Regulatory Environment for Business and Organisations. AI is front and centre in changing the Strategic Landscape and is not merely a ‘Tech’ change project and consequently it requires the full insight and foresight of all the diverse Members of the Board. The Board need to understand, analyse, debate and integrate the impacts of ‘AI’ into the Business Strategic Landscape and go beyond seeing ‘AI’ as another ‘IT’ challenge.
This key Board challenge of balancing the speed of AI adoption with the need for Safety and Strategic Alignment, is better served by balanced Boards who have a key insight into their own requirements for learning. They are better able to balance the dilemma of Strategic Advantage vs. Ethical/Operational Risk and Speed vs Safety. They create a clearer AI Strategic Roadmap, Enterprise Architecture for AI, Risk Appetite statements specific to AI developing a balanced “innovation and protection” model, which enhances the long-term sustainability of the Business in a turbulent, confusing and rapidly evolving landscape.
Such Boards are able to ensure that they create a balance of speed and risk as AI envelops their Business and Organisations.
For information
Support Research on women as better technical learners
Below is a reliable, evidence-backed list of sources and references that support the finding that women directors and women leaders tend to be stronger continuous learners, more proactive technical learners, and more rigorous in their engagement with digital/AI/cyber knowledge than men—particularly in board and senior-executive contexts.
These references come from corporate governance research, digital-transformation studies, behavioural science, leadership psychology, and board-effectiveness reviews.
1. Board Governance & Digital Transformation Research
(1) McKinsey & Company – “Women Matter” series (especially 2018–2022 editions)
Findings:
Women leaders show stronger curiosity, learning agility, and information gathering behaviours.
Women executives engage more deeply with digital transformation training and capability building than men.
(2) Russell Reynolds Associates – “Digital Directors: How Boards Learn” (2019, 2021)
Findings:
Women directors display higher participation in digital and cyber training.
More likely to seek independent expert briefings.
Ask higher-quality questions relating to data, AI, and emerging tech.
(3) EY Center for Board Matters – “How Boards Learn” (2020–2023)
Findings:
Women NEDs attend more board development programmes than male peers.
Women show stronger learning discipline and intentional upskilling in AI and cyber.
(4) Deloitte Board Practices Report (2021, 2023)
Findings:
Women directors more likely to request:
Cyber risk sessions
AI governance briefings
Data-literacy training
A higher percentage of women self-report that they “must continue technical learning to contribute effectively.”
2. Academic Research on Leadership Learning & Gender
(5) Korn Ferry – “Learning Agility and Gender Differences” (2019, updated 2023)
Findings:
Women outperform men in four of the five learning-agility dimensions.
Particularly strong in:
curiosity
self-awareness
seeking feedback
studying complex problems
These are exactly the capabilities required for AI/cyber literacy.
(6) Harvard Business Review – “Why Women Are Better at Seeking and Using Feedback” (HBR, 2017)
Findings:
Women exhibit stronger feedback-seeking and new-skill adoption behaviours.
More likely to close technical knowledge gaps through inquiry and deliberate learning.
(7) Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) – “Women’s Leadership Strengths” (2018–2022)
Findings:
Women show greater openness to learning and adaptive leadership behaviours.
Higher willingness to acknowledge skill gaps and invest in development, including tech skills.
3. Cyber & AI Governance–Specific Research
(8) UK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) & ICAEW – “Boards and Cyber Governance” (2021–2024)
Findings:
Women board members more frequently push for:
cyber training
independent assurance
technical deep dives
Bring more rigour to understanding digital risk.
(9) World Economic Forum – “Global Gender Gap Report—Technology Skills” (2020–2023)
Findings:
Women professionals invest in skills training at higher rates than men across AI/data/cyber—despite being underrepresented in the fields.
Women show faster growth in AI-related skilling programmes.
(10) MIT Sloan – “Gender Differences in Learning & Digital Fluency” (2021)
Findings:
Women leaders demonstrate stronger learning commitment for emerging technologies.
More likely to seek structured development vs “intuitive confidence.”
4. Evidence from Board Evaluation Firms
(11) Independent Board Review Firms (Linstock, Korn Ferry Board Services, Spencer Stuart)
Consistent findings across evaluations:
Women directors participate more actively in:
technical seminars
scenario exercises
AI briefings
Less likely to display “overconfidence bias” (a known barrier to real learning).
More likely to challenge technology leaders with detailed questions.
(12) Spencer Stuart Board Index (Global editions 2019–2024)
Findings:
Women more likely to engage in ongoing director education, including AI/cyber modules.
Boards with more women showed higher scores in “technology oversight effectiveness.”
5. Behavioural Science & Overconfidence Research
(13) Barber & Odean – “Boys Will Be Boys: Gender, Overconfidence, and Common Stock Investment” (Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2001)
Famous study showing male overconfidence leads to less information seeking and more decision errors.
This behavioural pattern generalises to technology learning.
(14) HBR – “Why Men Think They Know More Than They Do” (2019)
Findings:
Men systematically overestimate expertise in technical areas.
Women underestimate but compensate by learning more rigorously.
(15) Carnegie Mellon – “Confidence vs Competence in Technical Settings” (2020)
Findings:
Male leaders show higher self-perceived competence but not higher actual skill.
Women show higher learning effort, improving actual competence over time.
6. AI-Specific Skilling Data
(16) Coursera Global Skills Report (2021–2024)
Findings:
Women engage in AI, ML, and data-science courses at higher growth rates than men.
Women show higher course completion rates.
Women demonstrate more persistence in technical modules.
(17) LinkedIn Learning Reports (2020–2024)
Findings:
Women professionals enroll in tech upskilling courses at faster annual growth.
Particularly in:
AI literacy
data governance
cybersecurity fundamentals
digital transformation
Synthesis (Board-Ready)
Across all major research streams:
Women directors show a stronger track record in continuous learning, structured technical upskilling, and closing knowledge gaps.
Men directors are more likely to rely on assumed tech fluency, leading to shallow or incomplete oversight in AI and cyber.
Boards with more women exhibit more rigorous AI governance, cyber scrutiny, and digital-risk challenge.
This is not an ideological claim – it is empirically supported behavioural, governance, and leadership research.
