KC's tech gender gap could grow with AI
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Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
Women are landing just a quarter of the country's booming AI jobs, the same share they hold of KC's entire tech workforce.
Why it matters: AI jobs are some of the fastest-growing and highest-paying in the country, and when they arrive in KC, they'll be filled from a local tech workforce where the gender gap is baked in.
By the numbers: Men landed 74%, and women 26%, of new U.S. hires for AI roles in 2025, per LinkedIn data. The higher the pay, the wider the gap.
- 82% of new hires to "member of technical staff" roles, common in AI labs, went to men. Median listed pay this year is $223,000.
- The data annotator job, with median pay of $51,000, is roughly split 50/50 between men and women.
Zoom in: KC's tech workforce starts from that same place. Women make up 26% of the metro's nearly 75,000 tech workers while accounting for 49% of the overall workforce, per the KC Tech Council's latest Tech Specs report, which draws on CompTIA and JobsEQ data.
- Whether AI hiring here follows the national pattern is unknown. No public data breaks out the metro's AI hiring by gender, and the report doesn't separate AI roles from the rest of tech.
Zoom out: Women aren't just missing the new jobs. They're likelier to hold the ones AI automates: occupations dominated by women are almost twice as exposed to generative AI as male-dominated ones, per the International Labour Organization.
- In KC, more than 40,000 workers in customer service and white-collar roles are exposed to AI automation, The Beacon reported last October.
State of play: KC's AI economy is still young. The metro ranked No. 53 nationally in AI adoption as of July 2025, per a Brookings Institution analysis cited in the report, which called the city a "nascent adopter."
What they're saying: "Women may be included in the AI economy, but not in the roles most likely to drive long-term economic mobility, leadership, and decision-making power," LinkedIn's Sarah Steinberg said in an email to Axios.
What we're watching: Whether the pipeline changes the math. The Tech Council runs LEGiT KC, a career mentoring program for girls interested in tech.
The bottom line: Women have long been underrepresented in tech. The AI boom is widening that divide nationally, and KC enters it already behind.