Science, Technology, and Innovation in an AI-Powered Future: The Gender Inclusion Imperative for Economic Transformation
29th Commission on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD)
21 April 2026, 13:45-14:45, Room VIII, Palais des Nations
Artificial Intelligence represents the defining STI development of our era, with potential to add nearly $20 trillion to the global economy by 2030. Yet a fundamental paradox threatens this promise: while AI could unlock extraordinary innovation capacity and trigger unprecedented growth, systematic exclusion of 50% of the world’s population—women—profoundly constrains these possibilities. This side event will present evidence from the Gender Advisory Board’s recent paper demonstrating that three critical gaps limit AI’s economic potential: women’s underrepresentation in AI research and design (holding only 31% of positions in major AI companies); their invisibility in training datasets (creating accuracy rates as low as 20% for complex prediction tasks); and persistent adoption divides (with women showing 10% lower propensity to engage with GenAI tools globally, compounded by broader meaningful connectivity gaps). The session will move beyond technical training solutions to explore how meaningful participation in ideation, problem definition, and decision-making processes can unlock AI’s full economic potential, presenting quantifiable evidence that gender-responsive approaches systematically outperform exclusionary practices. Panel- Alice Rangel de Paiva Abreu, CSTD Gender Advisory Board, Professora Emérita, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
- Ritu Agarwal, CSTD Gender Advisory Board, Professor Johns Hopkins University, Founding Co-Director Johns Hopkins Center for Digital Health and Artificial Intelligence (CDHAI)
- Anita Gurumurthy, Executive Director, IT for Change
- Ana Neves, CSTD Gender Advisory Board, Head, Office for the Information Society and Internet Governance, FCT-FCCN, Portugal
- Moderator: Caitlin Kraft-Buchman, CSTD Gender Advisory Board Co-Chair, CEO Women At The Table / <A+> Alliance for Inclusive Algorithms / <AI & Equality> Initiative