Every week there's a new headline telling women what we want from AI, what we're afraid of, and how far behind we are. Most of us were never asked, and no one voice can answer for all of us, mine included. Women use AI in as many ways as we live our lives. What we need is room for all of it, and a seat where the decisions get made.
This week I read two things back to back that I haven't been able to shake.
The first suggested that what women really need from AI is a kind of digital wife. Something to plan the birthday party, pick the costume, and keep track of the household.
Let me be clear about one thing first. The women I know who balance a career and a household are extraordinary. If AI takes some of that mental load off their plate, that's a genuine gift, not a small one. I use AI for plenty of personal things myself.
That isn't what bothered me. The framing did. "Everybody needs an AI wife" turns women's relationship with AI into something cute and domestic, as if what we're really after is a little helper for the chores. It quietly casts us as 1950s housewives who need some help around the house. That's not the picture of women I recognize, at home or at work.
The second was a sharp post from a woman who had started collecting headlines built on the idea that women are hesitant about AI, afraid of it, or at risk of being left behind. She had found over a hundred of them. And she said something that stopped me: the women she knows are building with AI, questioning it, and deciding for themselves where it's useful. She didn't recognize them in the headlines.
I don't either.
The problem isn't that AI can help at home. It's when a cute household helper becomes the whole story about what women want from it.
We were never asked
Look at how the story usually gets told.
"Women want AI to help with ___."
"Women are hesitant about AI because ___."
"Ladies, don't get left behind."
Every version of it speaks for all of us, as if women want one thing. Very few of them start by asking what women are actually doing with these tools.
I don't want to do the same thing in reverse. I can't speak for all women, and I wouldn't want to. Every woman has different needs, and she'll use AI differently because of them. That's something to celebrate, not flatten into a headline.
So here's my answer, for myself, as one woman in operations.
What I'm actually building
I'm a COO and Chief of Staff. I'm not technical, and I never trained as an engineer. This year I've built AI workflows that run real parts of a business.
One takes contractor hours, builds the invoice, routes it for approval, and sends it to accounting. It has three human sign-offs built in on purpose, because that's what keeps it trustworthy.
I've built agents for vendor management, for contractor onboarding and offboarding, and for tracking contract leads. I built a workflow for a colleague who was far too busy to learn how to build one herself, so she could get her time back without going down the rabbit hole.
None of it booked a birthday party.
And I build for home too. I built a tracker that follows every bill, household expense and subscription I have. It's basically a household manager. So this isn't about work tools being serious and home tools being silly. It's about being treated as someone who can build either one.
That's my side of it. Other women will have completely different stories, and every one of them deserves a place in the conversation.
And I'm far from the only one. A lot of the people sitting in operations, Chief of Staff and executive support seats are women. Those are exactly the seats where AI either works or doesn't, because that's where the questions live. Who approves this? What happens when the data is wrong? Which step has to stay human? Where does the work go next?
You can't automate a process well without understanding it. The people who understand how a company actually runs are very often the women who've been running it.
It's not either/or
Women don't fit in one box, and neither does how we use AI.
Some of us are building approval workflows. Some of us are using it to keep a family's schedule from falling apart. A lot of us are doing both in the same week. My household doesn't look like anyone else's, and neither does the way I use AI to run it. Neither version is more serious than the other.
But I don't need a cuter version of AI, and neither do most of the women I know. Designing AI for women as something soft and sweet tells us which version is supposedly meant for us.
What I'd push back on is the assumption that there's one version that's "for women." What I want, for myself and for every woman deciding how AI fits her life, is the same functionality, the same access to the tools and training, and the same expectation that we'll build whatever matters most in our lives, at home or at work. A tool designed around a narrow idea of who we are won't close any gap. Taking the full range of women's lives and ambitions seriously will.
The gap is power, not interest
If fewer women are using AI in some places, I'd look at the room before I'd look at the women.
Who decides which tools the company buys? Who gets time to experiment? Who's invited to the AI working group, and who hears about it after the fact? Whose ideas get "let's revisit next quarter," and whose get "go build it"?
In my own career, nobody had to talk me out of being afraid of AI. What I needed was room to try, and I found plenty of people telling me it was too complex or not the right time. So I built it myself, and the doubt disappeared when people could see it running.
That shouldn't be the only path. Most people shouldn't have to push through that alone.
What leaders can do
If you lead a company and you want more women building with AI, the fix is less about persuasion and more about access.
1. Put the women who run your operations in the room where AI decisions get made.
They know where the process breaks. They know which steps carry the risk. That's exactly the knowledge an AI rollout needs.
2. Give them time and budget to build, not just to attend a training.
A lunch-and-learn isn't the same as an afternoon to build something real.
3. Back their ideas out loud.
The most powerful thing a leader can say is "go build it." Say it to the women on your team.
4. Ask instead of assuming.
Ask the women on your team what they'd automate first. Some will name a vendor contract process. Some will name the logistics that eat their evenings. Both answers deserve a serious tool.
What I'd tell other women
You don't need permission to start, and you don't need to be technical. Pick the task you're most tired of doing, map the steps, and build from there. Find other women doing the same thing and learn out loud together. There are more of us than the headlines suggest.
We're not one story. We're building, each in our own way. The conversation just needs to catch up.
If you're a founder who wants an operator who builds AI into how your company actually runs, let's talk.
