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New Delhi, 9 July 2026: UNESCO’s Regional Office for South Asia today launched the Outlook Study on Artificial Intelligence and Gender in South Asia, the first regional assessment of women’s participation in artificial intelligence (AI) across Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka. Produced by the UNESCO Women for Ethical AI (W4EAI) South Asia Chapter, the report maps women’s participation across the AI ecosystem — from education to entrepreneurship, revealing how barriers accumulate across the AI pipeline and limit access to leadership.
Higher education does not translate into AI careers
Across South Asia, women account for only about one-third of STEM students. Progress in women’s access to higher education has not consistently translated into participation in AI-related disciplines. In Maldives, women make up nearly 78 per cent of university students, yet only about 2 per cent enrol in science and technology programmes. In Nepal, women represent just 24 per cent of computing and IT enrolments, while in Bangladesh they account for only one in five STEM graduates. In India, women have reached near parity in science disciplines, but men continue to dominate engineering and technology enrolment.
Women contribute to AI research, but rarely leads it
A bibliometric analysis of AI publications between 2015 and 2025 shows that while 71.76 per cent of publications across the six countries include at least one woman author, women hold only 26 per cent of corresponding or primary authorship positions—roles that typically reflect research leadership and intellectual ownership. Country-level disparities are particularly pronounced: male corresponding authors produce 2.7 times more AI publications than women in India, eight times more in Bangladesh and nearly 14 times more in Maldives. Sri Lanka records the narrowest gap.
Highest-value AI roles remain dominated by men
Globally, women represent 41.2 per cent of the overall workforce but only 28.2 per cent of the STEM workforce. In AI, women are significantly less likely than men to report AI engineering skills on LinkedIn. The study finds that women are concentrated in upstream data preparation and downstream service functions, with limited representation in model development—the stage where technical authority, innovation, intellectual property and higher-value employment are concentrated. LinkedIn data from 2024 show that women account for only 29.92 per cent of LinkedIn users in India who report AI engineering skills, compared with 20.57 per cent in Nepal and 15.64 per cent in Bangladesh.
Women entrepreneurs continue to face barriers to investment
Women’s participation in AI entrepreneurship remains constrained across the region, not by lack of ambition but by unequal access to technical expertise, finance and institutional support. In India, only about 10 per cent of AI start-ups have at least one woman founder. In Bangladesh, women account for just 7.2 per cent of entrepreneurs overall. Access to investment also remains limited: fewer than 1 per cent of India’s estimated 10,000 angel investors are women.
Artificial intelligence is emerging as one of the defining technologies of our time. It could be an accelerator of gender equality — expanding access to knowledge, services and opportunity. But AI systems can just as easily reproduce or even exacerbate existing inequalities when they are built on biased data or exclude diverse voices. This study is UNESCO’s contribution to helping South Asia choose the first path, not the second.
Tim CurtisDirector & Representative, UNESCO Regional Office for South Asia
Women and girls in South Asia are being left out of the AI story — not because they lack ability, but because the systems around them have not been designed with them in mind. What we need is a two-pronged approach: AI education alongside scientific temper — critical, analytical thinking built from the school level upwards.
Dr. Bhavani RaoDean, School of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Amrita University, and UNESCO Chair on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment
About the study
The Outlook Study on Artificial Intelligence and Gender in South Asia builds on the 2024 UNESCO Women for Ethical AI Global Outlook Study and is guided by the gender provisions of UNESCO’s Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence. It examines women’s participation across every stage of the AI ecosystem, from education and research to the workforce and entrepreneurship, showing how barriers accumulate over time and shape women’s pathways into AI knowledge, employment and leadership.
The study combines national education and labour force statistics, bibliometric analysis undertaken jointly by UNESCO and the Institute of Informatics and Communication at the University of Delhi, LinkedIn Economic Graph data, and interviews with women working in AI-related fields across all six countries.
About UNESCO Women for Ethical AI South Asia Chapter
The UNESCO Women for Ethical AI (W4EAI) South Asia Chapter, co-chaired by Amrita University and UNESCO’s Regional Office for South Asia, was established in 2025 to bring together women leaders from academia, industry and civil society to advance inclusive and gender-responsive AI development across the region.
The Outlook Study aims to support governments, academia, industry and civil society in developing more inclusive AI ecosystems and advancing implementation of UNESCO’s Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence.
read more: https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/unesco-launches-outlook-study-artificial-intelligence-and-gender-south-asia?hub=701
