How FUTURES is Addressing the AI Workforce Transformation and How Employers Can Join Us
By Ana Lόpez van Balen
September 2, 2026
The first Labor Day was celebrated in New York City in 1882, in the middle of the Industrial Revolution, which would give rise to manufacturing jobs, the middle class, and eventually, in 1916, the 8-hour workday.
Next week, we’ll celebrate another Labor Day in the midst of another economic transformation affecting the workforce: the AI revolution.
AI is reshaping the workforce and the broader employment landscape, with effects that will play out for decades. Women sit at the center of this transition, and as it currently stands, it will put their safety, their agency, their power, and their future at risk.
We need to ensure that women equally benefit from the coming transformation and are protected from any harms.
The Data Around AI & Women
AI will transform work, who does it, and what it looks like. Already, the data around how it will affect women is concerning:
- In 2025, only 26 percent of AI hires were women.
- Fewer women than men are engaging with AI, which could lead to a knowledge gap.
- Jobs that are traditionally held by women, like customer service representatives and human resources professionals, are most vulnerable to AI.
- AI is thus far showing bias against women, which can affect hiring practices and medical diagnosis.
As AI affords opportunities for streamlining workflow and increasing productivity, employers cannot forget about women.
Employers Can Ensure Safe and Responsible AI Adoption
FUTURES has almost two decades of experience working with employers to advance economic solutions for workers. Through our Center for Economic Futures, we develop tools that help workers access and retain quality employment, strengthen workplace protections, and build long-term financial security.
Our history propels us to partner with employers to create safe and equitable workplaces for women. We seek to ensure AI and the transformation of the workplace works for women through the development of standards for AI adoption to mitigate potential harms to women in the workplace.
To do that, we are looking for companies that want to work with us to shape how they build, leverage, and deploy AI throughout their workforce. In partnership with corporate leaders, we want to help shape how AI enters the workplace in ways that reduce bias, protect safety, and strengthen retention, healthy cultures, and workplace inclusion.
From policy and cultural change to building capacity on workstreams that increase efficiency and safety, corporations can shape their adoption of AI. They can ensure women are not left behind and can grow their AI knowledge, use, and influence to improve their work and their workplaces. This will help safeguard everyone’s futures.
What Employers Can Do Now
AI adoption in the workplace is accelerating fast, with few safeguards. Employers have options to ensure that AI benefits and works for women in their workplaces.
Employers can:
- Equip workers with a policy on responsible use of AI in the workplace, setting parameters and ethical guidelines.
- Train workers on ethical AI use.
- Evaluate and re-evaluate AI implementation and adjust.
- Ensure women are part of the conversation on AI implementation.
It’s critical to involve women in AI workplace implementation because they are more distrustful of AI, and there is obvious cause to be alarmed. Between the inherent gender bias displayed by AI, how it’s used to create deepfakes of women, how AI supports technology-facilitated abuse, and the rampant growth of data centers and the environmental impacts, AI and its potential is causing fear and disruption.
But that distrust also makes women perfect arbiters of ethical AI. Who better to ask the tough questions about AI, its ethical usage, its inherent bias, and its non-humanness?
Women, their well-being, their safety, their agency, and their future must be prioritized and resourced in an AI future. Their talents and strengths can and will shape an AI future that can work for everyone.
Into the FUTURE
In 1894, Congress passed a law naming the first Monday in September a federal holiday to celebrate workers, all they do daily for their families, their employers, and for the country. 132 years later, we continue to celebrate workers, even as the AI revolution rises.
As we do, let’s also work to safeguard women’s future and ensure that the companies and employers driving the AI revolution build and deploy this technology with women’s economic security, safety, and advancement as a priority.
On this Labor Day and every day FUTURES is committed to what we have always been committed to: an inclusive, safe, and more prosperous future of work. If you are an employer who wants support in implementing AI responsibly for your workers, connect with us by emailing econ@futureswithoutviolence.org.
