I Wrote The AI Gap Because I Was Tired of Watching Women Get Left Behind

Let me set the stage. It is September 2025. MIT. I'm at the AI-Powered Women's Conference and my podcast, AI Voice or Victim, is the podcast of the conference. I've got a group of 25 C-Level women (all AI-centric) with me. And one night at dinner this group of women all decided to ask their favorite LLM:

When AI was asked to picture a powerful professional, it didn't picture us.

"Based on everything you know about me, what do you think I look like?"

And one by one, all of these C-level women, heavy AI users, founders, and educators, all got the same version of a pale, stale, white male - know what I'm talking about... all the Brads, Chads, and software developer dads out there. None women. None "non-white."

Then came the jaw dropper. One woman finally generated an image of a woman with two pieces of artwork in the background. One of a cat, and one that stated:

"We MEN belong in the room where decisions are being made."

That is why I wrote this book. Because WOMEN belong in the room where decisions are made. But history has been written in the training data...

...and history has never been neutral.

The AI Revolution Is Happening. Women Are Being Written Out of It.

Here is what most people are not talking about.

AI is not a future problem. It is a right-now problem. Every company you work for is already using it. The tools that screen your resume, score your performance review, and determine who gets flagged for promotion—many of them are powered by AI. And most of them were built with very little input from women.

Less than 25% of AI jobs are held by women. Only 18% of published AI research comes from women. And in leadership? The gap is even wider. When the people building these systems do not look like us, do not live our experiences, do not carry our histories—the systems they build do not serve us.

This is not hypothetical. We have already seen it play out. Facial recognition software that misidentifies women and people of color. Hiring algorithms that penalize resume gaps—the same gaps that disproportionately affect women who took time for caregiving. Healthcare AI trained almost entirely on male data. These are not edge cases. They are the predictable consequences of building technology without the people it affects most.

I Have Spent Decades Watching Women Be Excluded from the Rooms Where It Happens

My career has spanned corporate HR, executive coaching, and building communities for women who refuse to stay small. I have sat in thousands of boardrooms, hiring panels, and strategy sessions. I have watched brilliant women be overlooked, talked over, and quietly pushed out—not because they lacked talent, but because the systems around them were not built with them in mind.

Now we are standing at the edge of the biggest technological shift of our lifetime. And I am watching it happen again. The same patterns. The same exclusion. Just faster, and coded into algorithms this time.

I could not sit on the sidelines and watch that happen without doing something about it. So I wrote The AI Gap.

What The AI Gap Is Really About

This book is not a tech manual. It is not a glossary of AI terms or a how-to guide for learning to code. I am not a software engineer and I am not writing for one.

The AI Gap is written for the woman sitting in the back of a meeting while her male colleagues confidently talk about AI tools they barely understand. It is for the woman who feels like the train is leaving the station and she is still figuring out where the platform is. It is for the woman who has been told her entire career to work harder, lean in, and prove herself—and who is now being handed a whole new arena to prove herself in, without anyone asking if the game was designed fairly.

The book covers why the gap exists—the history, the structural barriers, the cultural conditioning that keeps women from claiming their seat in tech spaces. It covers what is at stake when women are absent from AI development. And most importantly, it covers what we can do about it. Practically. Powerfully. Right now.

And by "we" I'm not just talking about women. Women are tired of being responsible for doing "all the work" to fix the inequities that are hard coded into our culture. I'm talking about the leaders inside organizations who are rolling out AI transformations. I'm talking about the big AI companies that have minimal to 0 diverse representation at the top, but are making decisions baked in silos.

Because I am not interested in just naming the problem. I want to change it.

The Gap Is Not About Capability. It Never Was.

Let me be direct about something.

Women are not underrepresented in AI because we are less capable, less interested, or less suited for it. Ada Lovelace wrote the first algorithm. Grace Hopper invented the first compiler. Women built the foundation of modern computing and then got pushed out as it became lucrative and powerful. That is not a coincidence. That is a pattern.

The AI gap is a power gap. It is about who has access, who has resources, who gets taken seriously, and who gets to shape the tools that will govern the next century. When women are excluded from that conversation, we do not just lose professionally. The entire world loses. Bias gets baked into the code. Blind spots become policy. And the systems meant to help everyone end up serving only some.

This book names that. Clearly. Without apology.

The book that started the conversation — available now at theaigapbook.com

What I Want You to Walk Away With

When you finish The AI Gap, I want you to feel three things.

Informed. You will understand what the AI landscape actually looks like for women today—the data, the history, and the dynamics that created this moment.

Angry. Not destructively. Productively. The kind of angry that makes you want to build something, say something, change something.

Equipped. Because awareness without action is just frustration. Every section of this book leads to something you can do—in your career, in your company, in your community.

The future of AI does not have to look like its past. But it will—unless we show up and refuse to let it.

This Book Is for You

If you have ever felt like the conversation about AI is happening without you, this book is for you.

If you are a woman in corporate who is using AI tools right now but feels like you are winging it while everyone else seems confident, this book is for you.

If you are a leader who wants to understand how to build AI practices at your company that actually include and protect women, this book is for you.

If you are tired of being the only one in the room asking the uncomfortable questions—this book is for you.

We cannot afford to wait for the tech industry to figure out it needs us. We need to claim our seat. Build our skills. Use AI as a tool for our own advancement. And demand that the systems being built in the next decade are built for everyone.

The AI Gap is my contribution to that fight.

I hope you will read it. And then I hope you will pass it to the woman next to you who needs it too.

Get Your Copy of The AI Gap

The AI Gap is available now. Whether you are just beginning to explore how AI affects your career or you are ready to become a voice for change inside your organization, this book meets you where you are.

Because the AI revolution is not coming. It is here. And we are not showing up late to it. We are showing up on purpose.

Learn more at theaigapbook.com

FAQ:

Where can I buy The AI Gap?

You can get your copy of The AI Gap at theaigapbook.com. Available now.

What is The AI Gap about?

The AI Gap is Erica Rooney's urgent call to action about the widening divide between women and artificial intelligence. It exposes how AI systems are being built without women's input, why that is dangerous for everyone, and what women in corporate can do right now to take their seat at the table before the future gets written without them.

Who is The AI Gap written for?

This book is for every woman in corporate who has felt the AI conversation happening around her, not with her. It is for leaders who want to build fairer AI practices. And it is for anyone who believes that the future of technology should work for everyone—not just some.

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