As a young woman listening to a Senate hearing on the impact of AI on the workforce held this summer, I felt equal parts interested and devastated. Each witness on the panel expressed concern about how AI might hollow out or even eliminate entry-level jobs, but not one witness mentioned how women or people of color might disproportionately suffer the consequences of AI’s economic impact in their opening testimonies. In fact, throughout the entire hearing, only Senator Blunt Rochester raised how AI would affect women of color differently, to which the witnesses responded with only an acknowledgement of the importance of considering how women of color will be impacted by AI.
Not only did the witnesses fail to discuss women, they also failed to discuss the impact of AI on Gen Z women – particularly Gen Z women of color – and their careers. The same gap exists in research on AI adoption as well. While research shows women are generally more concerned about AI than men are and polling shows that young adults under 30 are more concerned about AI than other age groups are, there’s little on how Gen Z women specifically feel about AI.
But we should consider Gen Z women. Despite being considered “digital natives,” Gen Z workers and women are among the most skeptical about the increasing use of AI – and they have every right to be. Policymakers interested in regulating AI should think carefully about who benefits from the policies they promote.
Women are skeptical of AI. Gen Z’s skepticism of AI’s potential grows.
Women are less optimistic about AI and less likely to adopt AI tools in their work. Across 18 studies of over 140,000 college students and workers, the number of women using AI was anywhere between 10 to 40 percent less than the number of men using AI. And Black women are deeply distrustful of AI: In a 2025 survey, 69 percent of Black women said that AI made them feel unsafe, and 45 percent said that they do not believe that the creators of AI care about their community’s well-being.
Even as 51 percent of Gen Z report using generative AI at least once a week, 42 percent report feeling anxiety and 31 percent report feeling anger towards AI. Gen Z is also disenchanted with AI’s potential as a tool in the workplace: Only 18 percent feel strongly that AI can help them complete work faster in 2026 compared to 22 percent in 2025, and nearly half of recent college graduates looking for employment believe that AI has devalued their (expensive) degrees.
Gen Z’s AI use gender gap is more significant than other generations as well: Gen Z men are 25 percent more likely to have experimented with AI than Gen Z women.
Women and young people aren’t wrong to be concerned.
Young women may find it harder to land a job in an AI-centered job market.
The unemployment rate for recent college graduates hit 6 percent in the spring of 2025, higher than the 4 percent national average. Though young people with college degrees still see better employment outcomes than young people without college degrees, in a 2024 survey, 37 percent of HR managers polled would prefer to use AI over hiring a recent college graduate. The risk of unemployment is compounded for Gen Z women. Women hold 83 percent of the most AI-vulnerable jobs, and women of color are some of the most likely to work in AI-exposed occupations, such as translation and interpretation services.
The use of AI in hiring may also make it harder for some Gen Z women to land a job. Studies show that some AI hiring tools favor white and male applicants. With 90 percent of American employers – and 98.4 percent of Fortune 500 companies – using AI to screen the enormous number of resumes they receive, algorithmic bias locks qualified women out of jobs. And algorithmic bias is an old issue. Amazon’s 2018 AI hiring tool discriminated against graduates of women’s colleges.
Despite the growing evidence of disproportionate harm, policymakers and experts aren’t paying enough attention.
The Senate hearing on AI made clear that policymakers and experts are neglecting the disproportionate risk AI poses to Gen Z women in the workplace, reinforcing that their concerns should be taken seriously – but currently aren’t.
Policymakers interested in regulating AI must listen to young women and think carefully about how their policies shape our economy and workplaces across the country for the next generation of workers.