Do women use AI less than men? What Pew just found
The chatbot-use gap has almost closed. The trust gap is a different story.
Key takeaway: Not by much anymore. Pew Research's June 17, 2026 survey of 5,119 U.S. adults found women and men use AI chatbots at nearly identical rates (47% of women, 50% of men), but daily use, workplace tools, and trust in AI still skew male. Women are 20% less likely globally to…
By Dear Sarah · · Updated
Key takeaways
- Pew Research's June 17, 2026 survey found 47% of women and 50% of men now use AI chatbots, closing an 11-point gap that existed two years ago.
- Daily AI chatbot use still skews male — 27% of men use them every day compared to 20% of women.
- 68% of women say AI is advancing too quickly, compared with 58% of men, and 33% of women expect AI's personal impact on their lives to be negative.
- A Harvard Business Review study of 1,026 engineers found female engineers were rated 13% less competent when believed to be using AI, versus 6% for men, on identical code.
- UC Berkeley Haas research led by Solène Delecourt found women are about 20% less likely than men to use generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity, and the gap holds across countries and education levels.
Hi, love. Someone shared a headline with me this week that read like a small victory: the AI gender gap is closing. And it is, in one specific way. But that word "closing" is doing a lot of work. Pew Research just published a survey of 5,119 U.S. adults, and yes — women and men now use AI chatbots at nearly the same rate (47% of women, 50% of men, up from an 11-point gap two years ago). What is still uneven is trust, frequency, and what we are using these tools for. So if you have been feeling like AI was not quite made for you, the data agrees with you.
What Pew's new survey actually found
The report landed on June 17, 2026, from a team that included researchers Monica Anderson, Michelle Faverio, Eugenie Park, and Colleen McClain. A few numbers worth holding:
- Daily use: 27% of men vs. 20% of women.
- ChatGPT is identical at 44%. But Copilot (22% vs. 13%), Gemini (29% vs. 20%), Claude (9% vs. 4%), and Grok (11% vs. 4%) all skew male.
- Why we open the app: men lean toward searching for information, work tasks, and entertainment. Women are more likely than men to reach for a chatbot for emotional support or advice.
- The vibe check: 68% of women say AI is advancing too quickly, versus 58% of men. And 33% of women expect the personal impact of AI on their own lives over the next 20 years to be negative.
Read together, this is not really a story about women "catching up." It is a story about women showing up, trying the tools, and staying skeptical about whether the tools were actually built for them. Research led by UC Berkeley Haas professor Solène Delecourt, working with colleagues at Stanford and Harvard, put a global number on that skepticism: women are about 20% less likely than men to use generative AI, and the gap holds across income levels, education, and countries.
Why so many of us are hesitating
Here is where it gets interesting. A Harvard Business Review study last summer asked 1,026 engineers to rate the same piece of code. Some were told a human wrote it. Some were told AI helped. When reviewers thought AI was involved, they rated the engineer 9% less competent for identical work. For women, the penalty was 13%. For men, 6%. Same code. Different verdicts. Michelle Travis unpacked that finding in Forbes just last week, and it named something a lot of us have been quietly noticing: using AI at work is not a neutral choice for us. It is a bet against a bias.
Meredith Broussard, the data journalist behind More Than a Glitch, calls the underlying issue "not a glitch but a feature": bias baked in from the start rather than a bug to be patched later. That frame keeps coming back to me. When women hesitate on AI, we are not being technophobic. We are doing the math on tools that have, so far, mostly not had us in mind. If you want the longer arc on how we got here, a short history of AI bias from search bars to chatbots walks through it well.
Does that mean women should just avoid AI?
Please, no. Sitting out does not fix the tools. It just means fewer of us shape them. What I would gently push back on is the version of "close the gap" that reads like use it more so you do not fall behind. That framing skips right past why women are being careful in the first place, and it puts the fix on us instead of on the tools.
A better version: use it thoughtfully, on your terms, and notice what it gets right and wrong for you specifically. Every time you nudge a chatbot away from a lazy assumption, you are doing real work — for you, for the next woman it talks to, and for the model itself. There is more on why that matters in a women-first AI confidante is a design choice, not a gimmick, if you want to sit with it.
One thing to try today
Pick one thing you would normally Google — a recipe swap, a work email you are stuck on, a question you are too tired to phrase to a friend — and ask an AI instead. Then rate the answer honestly: did it hear you, or a generic version of you? If it missed, tell it what it missed. That correction is a data point. You are not just a user of these tools. You are a small vote in how they learn. If you want a nudge on where to start, how to talk to any AI and spot its blind spots is a good next read.
Quote to sit with
"Algorithms are opinions embedded in code." — Cathy O'Neil
💌 Sarah
Frequently asked questions
Do women use AI chatbots less than men?
Not by much anymore, according to Pew Research's June 2026 survey of 5,119 U.S. adults. 47% of women and 50% of men now report using AI chatbots — a gap that stood at 11 points two years ago. Men still use chatbots on a daily basis more often (27% vs. 20%), and the gap persists on tools like Copilot, Gemini, Grok, and Claude, even though ChatGPT use is now identical between women and men at 44% each.
Why are women more skeptical of AI than men?
Pew Research found 68% of women think AI is advancing too quickly compared with 58% of men, and 33% of women expect the personal impact of AI on their lives to be negative. That skepticism tracks with research: studies from UN Women, Harvard, and UC Berkeley Haas have all found that AI systems reproduce gender stereotypes, and that women who adopt AI at work often face a professional 'competence penalty' from colleagues rating their output.
Is there a competence penalty for women who use AI at work?
Yes. A 2025 Harvard Business Review study of 1,026 engineers found that when reviewers were told AI helped write a piece of code, they rated the engineer 9% less competent on average — even though the code was identical. The penalty was 13% for female engineers and 6% for male engineers. In practice, women face a real professional cost for adopting the same tools men are being encouraged to use, which helps explain why female engineers were adopting AI coding assistants at 31% versus 41% overall.
How can women use AI more thoughtfully?
Start small. Pick a task you would normally Google or ask a friend, try asking an AI, and notice where the answer feels generic, off, or built for someone else. Then correct it. Every specific correction is a small vote in how models learn about women's questions. It also helps to pay attention to what AI does well for you — recipe swaps, drafting, brainstorming — and what still needs a human, like emotional support or nuanced professional advice.
Which AI chatbots are women using most in 2026?
ChatGPT is the most-used chatbot for women and men equally, at 44% each, according to Pew Research's June 2026 survey. Google's Gemini (20% of women vs. 29% of men), Microsoft's Copilot (13% vs. 22%), Anthropic's Claude (4% vs. 9%), and xAI's Grok (4% vs. 11%) all still skew heavily male. The widest gender gaps are on workplace-oriented tools like Copilot and Claude.
Sources
- The gender gap in AI — Pew Research Center
- AI's Gender Gap — UC Berkeley Haas News
- Research: The Hidden Penalty of Using AI at Work — Harvard Business Review
- Women Who Use AI Seen As Incompetent; Men Who Use AI Seen As Pragmatic — Forbes
Keep reading
- Who builds your AI? A few numbers worth knowing — You talk to AI like it gets you. But the rooms where it's built are mostly men. Here's what that quietly costs us.
- Neither artificial nor intelligent: the cost of AI — The word "artificial" makes AI sound weightless. It isn't. Here's what's underneath it, and why noticing matters for you.
- The math of who's missing from AI research — Fewer than 1 in 5 AI PhDs are women. Here's why the people missing from the lab end up shaping the AI in your pocket.
- From search bars to chatbots: a short history of AI bias — If a chatbot ever made you feel like an afterthought, it helps to know this didn't start with chatbots. The receipts go back years.