--- title: "Scientist Says That ChatGPT Has a “Staggering” Gender Problem" description: "As popular as ChatGPT has become, it apparently has a major gender problem — women don't seem to use it as much as men." date: "2025-03-22" modified: "2025-03-22" authors: - name: "Noor Al-Sibai" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/nooralsibai" url: "https://futurism.com/scientist-chatgpt-gender-gap" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "OpenAI" tags: - "chatbots" - "chatgpt" - "gender" --- # Scientist Says That ChatGPT Has a “Staggering” Gender Problem ![As popular as ChatGPT has become, it apparently has a major gender problem — women don't seem to use it as much as men.]() *\Image: Getty / Futurism\* As popular as ChatGPT has become, it apparently has a major gender problem. In an [interview with *PsyPost*](), University of Chicago economist Anders Humlum explained that in his research, he's encountered a "staggering gender gap in the adoption of ChatGPT." At the end of last year, Humlum and his colleague Emilie Vestergaard of the University of Copenhagen revealed in a [paper]() published in the *Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences* that women were 16 percentage points behind men in ChatGPT adoption. This trend was evident, the economist told *PsyPost*, "even among workers in the same jobs handling similar job tasks." Among the eleven "exposed" occupations they assessed — from software developers to teachers and legal professionals to customer service reps — journalists and marketing professionals were the most likely to use OpenAI's flagship chatbot, with roughly 64 percent attesting that they use it for work. Curiously, financial advisors and accountants had the lowest share of ChatGPT use, weighing in at just 18 percent of workers in those fields who said they use it for work. That could be because, as the paper notes, they "handle sensitive information" as part of their daily duties. Across the occupations surveyed, however, women were always behind men on adoption rates. Only about 62 percent of female journalists and marketers reported that they use ChatGPT for work — and the disparity was greater for women who work in financial advising, with fewer than 10 percent saying they had used it on the job. So what's behind the gender gap in ChatGPT adoption? To put it frankly, the researchers haven't quite figured that bit out. As Humlum and Vestergaard noted in their paper, women are "about as optimistic as men about the time savings from ChatGPT," and seem to even save a bit more time than their male counterparts in the workplace when they do use it. There's some evidence that women have more "adoption friction" — aversion, basically — to AI due to a lack of training with the tech, and women were more likely than men to say they "do not know how" to use ChatGPT. The researchers pointed to another 2024 survey that looked into student ChatGPT usage in Norway for potential answers. In the first half of that study, [researchers at Norway's Institute of Economics]() found that of the more than 500 students they surveyed, men were between 10 and 25 percentage points more likely than women to use ChatGPT regularly. Overall, that Norwegian study found that "female students use ChatGPT much less, are less proficient at writing ChatGPT prompts, and are more sensitive to bans on using ChatGPT," Humlum and Vestergaard wrote. While their Nordic counterparts didn't have any hard-and-fast explanations for that gender gap, both studies documenting the trend make it seem pretty legit. As he told *PsyPost*, Humlum is most interested in figuring out "how generative AI is reshaping labor markets" — but this finding was, nevertheless, "a big surprise for us." **More on AI and work:** [*People With This Level of Education Use AI the Most at Work*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've often been drawn to unpacking the narratives that underlie technological, scientific and medical progress, with a special interest in areas of conflict and ambiguity that end up setting agendas and steering the fates of both elites and the hoi polloi. I'm a committed generalist, but I often find myself returning to work involving NASA and the private space sector, the effects of AI on media and society, and the mechanics of the pharmaceutical industry, with a specific focus on the spread of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. Prior to Futurism, I worked for publications ranging from Media Matters and Truthdig to Raw Story and Bustle. I'm also the author of "Myspace Scene Queens," a 2024 title in Instar Books' acclaimed "Remember the Internet" series. My work at Futurism has been cited by outlets including the New Yorker, Slate, Nieman Lab, the Verge, the MIT Technology Review, the Sunday Times, and the Daily Beast. I grew up in North Carolina, attended the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and now live in Brooklyn, New York. In my free time, I'm an avid reader and music fan; you can probably find me at a local poetry reading, concert, underground rave, or DJ set. I'm the proud parent of an ineffable orange cat named Mee-Mow. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()