AI Layoffs Women Hit Hardest by Automation, Says ILO

Artificial intelligence is reshaping the future of work, but its employment risks are unlikely to be distributed evenly. Research published in March by the International Labour Organization found that nearly one in 10 women in high-income countries works in an occupation at the highest risk of AI exposure, suggesting the AI layoffs women face could be disproportionately severe. Previous technological revolutions offer a warning: while new industries create opportunities, workers whose skills become obsolete may struggle to find jobs offering comparable pay and security.

The danger lies in where AI is being deployed first. The technology is automating administrative, clerical and routine office tasks that have historically employed millions of female workers. AI is focused on routine tasks and numbers and finding patterns, and those types of jobs are the clerical, administrative jobs that a lot of women hold, said Ariane Hegewisch, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Women's Policy Research. It is still 90 per cent of secretaries and clerical jobs that are held by women, she noted.

Why AI layoffs women in clerical jobs face first

Large language models and AI agents excel at precisely the repetitive, rule-based decision making that defines much office support work: data entry, scheduling, document drafting, basic financial reporting and customer service scripts. The AI layoffs women are experiencing therefore reflect not bias in the technology but occupational segregation in the labour market, with women overrepresented in the roles most exposed to automation. Administrative roles in media, finance, software and professional services sit squarely in the firing line.

History offers an uncomfortable precedent. Decades before chatbots, the telephone switch operator, almost always a woman, stood at the centre of the information world, at one time the single largest occupation for white, US-born women under the age of 20. Automated switches wiped out those jobs entirely. Later waves of workplace automation, from household appliances to the personal computer, followed a similar pattern of destroying familiar work before new opportunities emerged.

The history lesson behind AI layoffs women should note

The record of past transitions is mixed. While new industries eventually created opportunities, displaced workers often struggled to find jobs with comparable pay and security. Research on the personal computer era found that office software cut sector jobs overall but raised wages for college-educated women who moved into managerial positions, indicating that education and mobility can mitigate disruption. The question now shadowing the AI layoffs women debate is whether generative AI will move faster than workers can adapt.

For India, the stakes are high. Millions of Indian women work in business process outsourcing, back-office operations and administrative roles that serve global clients, exactly the functions generative AI is beginning to absorb. If the AI layoffs women face in high-income countries accelerate, similar pressures could reach India's services sector within a few years, making preparation urgent rather than optional.

How India can prepare as AI layoffs women elsewhere rise

Experts say the answer is not to resist workplace automation but to steer it. Governments and employers need policies and upskilling programmes that help workers in clerical jobs and administrative roles move into AI-complementary work: roles requiring judgement, creativity, empathy and complex problem solving. Training in AI tools themselves is increasingly valuable, turning potential victims of automation into its supervisors. That shift is essential if the AI layoffs women face are to become AI opportunities women seize.

The ILO findings are a call for deliberate action. Without targeted reskilling, the AI layoffs women face risk widening the gender pay gap and reversing decades of progress in female labour force participation. With it, the same technology could free workers from drudgery. The difference, as with every industrial revolution, will be decided by policy choices made now.