Indian women rank high AI skills globally, but top roles held by men

The penetration of AI skills is highest among Indian women than anywhere else globally, data from the recent Stanford AI Index suggests.

According to the Index prepared by Stanford University Human Centred Artificial Intelli-gence, Indian women have a ‘relative AI skill penetration rate’ of 1.9.

This means that AI skills are almost twice more common among Indian women than the average member in all countries pooled together. The skill penetration rate was measured based on LinkedIn declarations of people.

At 1.9, Indian women are more AI-skilled than other advanced economies like the United States (1.71), Canada (0.97) and the UK (0.90). The metric in 2025 is also an improvement from last year’s rate of 1.61.

Skill Penetration

For men, the skill penetration rate this year stood at 2.38, down from the 2.78 posted last year.

The overall skill penetration in India in 2025 was 2.51, second only to the United States (2.63).

Aditya Mishra, MD & CEO of CIEL HR, believes that the relative AI skill penetration of Indian women is rooted in scale, access and intent.

“With women making up 35-40 per cent of the 1.5 million engineering graduates annually, India has a far broader entry funnel into technical education than many mature AI economies,” he said.

Mishra adds that flexible models of learning have also helped in encouraging greater participation from women.

AI skills can now be acquired through digital, self-paced learning and applied in hybrid or remote work environments.

This can also be observed in terms of the female enrolments in AI skilling programmes.

UGC education platform College Vidya reported that women’s participation in AI and machine learning programmes has grown fourfold in a single year from just 5 per cent in 2024 to 20 per cent in 2025.

Actively Skilling

However, while many organisations are actively skilling women at early and mid-career levels, the real gap persists at the AI leadership and research layers, where the under-representation of women persists.

In fact, a report by Nasscom and Boston Consulting Group recorded a 64 per cent gender dis-parity in AI leadership in India compared to global women leaders.

Sanketh Chengappa – Director and Business Head, Professional Staffing, Adecco India, flags that marginalisation exists in roles that shape product design, governance and ethical frameworks.

Many organisations have introduced inclusive leadership programmes and mentoring net-works to elevate women into AI roles, but the data shows that senior AI leadership continues to be male dominated, he said.