Career routes for women in higher education remain frustratingly obstructed by systemic barriers. Without strategic input, the existing gaps that women face, particularly in leadership, continue to widen and become more challenging to overcome.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) can help women to close this gap. It’s a way to reclaim time from inefficient processes and establish an authoritative professional presence. Used in the right way, AI can be the catalyst that transforms these barriers into launching points for incredible career growth.
Why AI is Reshaping Higher Education
Automating the Administrative Burden
Generative AI has the potential to reduce the administrative burden that many face in Higher Education. This frees up more time for meaningful work. It’s important to invest time in upskilling and learning the latest generative AI tools, and take advantage of the time-saving opportunities AI affords.
Developing New Job Opportunities
Many of the conversations around AI are about the risks it carries and its ability to replace humans in the near future. However, these advancements are an opportunity to create new roles that haven’t existed before, from ethics officers and prompt engineers to AI trainers specific to the education sector. The ability to fine-tune generative AI outputs and train data are skills that are rapidly growing in demand, and education is no exception.
Women who can develop these skills now could find themselves on a new career trajectory, using their existing experience and skills and finding ways to integrate them into new hybrid AI education specialists.
Using AI Effectively
Job applications and negotiation
AI can be used to conduct a skill gap analysis by inputting a job description for a new role—perhaps a leadership position—or to map your existing CV against necessary competencies. The AI output can highlight specific, targeted training needs and identifies transferable skills you might be underselling.
AI agents can effectively simulate difficult conversations too, so you can practice asking for salary negotiations or holding challenging discussions with senior colleagues. For example, you might instruct the AI to adopt the role of a senior member of staff or a resistant colleague and receive instant, personalised feedback on your tone, strategy, and persuasiveness.
Defining Your High-Impact Narrative
Self-promotion remains culturally fraught. But in a competitive environment like higher education, where executive leadership, research funding, and institutional influence depend on recognisable professional authority, the absence of a clear, compelling professional brand is a disadvantage.
AI gives you the tools to help you craft authoritative narratives that build your brand effectively. Similarly, it can analyse your discipline and career aspirations to identify the search terms and keywords that can enhance your online discoverability.
SEO agency Artemis Marketing explains that LLM SEO “stands for ‘Large Language Model SEO’. In simple terms, it means writing and structuring your content in a way that’s easy for AI tools like Google’s AI Overviews and Chat GPT to understand and use”. When an AI overview cites a woman’s work as the source for a definitive answer, it instantly validates her expertise, which is a powerful signal in professional work – especially for those working in a niche area. Implementing LLM SEO also increases the chances of your expertise showing up in AI overviews.
Perhaps of most value, AI can translate dense academic research into executive summaries designed for external stakeholders—grant providers, industry partners, policy makers, and media contacts—who need to grasp your work’s significance without disciplinary expertise.
Tackling Gender Bias
There are legitimate concerns about AI perpetuating existing gender and racial biases, and those can’t be dismissed—these tools learn from historical data that reflects systemic inequity. However, refusing to engage with AI doesn’t protect women from bias. It merely ensures women become less competitive as others adopt these productivity multipliers.
The solution lies in developing responsible strategies that vet and refine AI outputs to ensure the language remains neutral, inclusive, and aligned with institutional equity goals. Review AI-generated text for gendered language patterns—for example, does it describe your leadership as “supportive” while describing male colleagues’ leadership as “strategic”? Interrogate whether the AI undersells your accomplishments or employs hedging language. Instruct the tool explicitly to avoid gendered assumptions and to centre impact over likability.
AI alone can’t dismantle imbalances in higher education, but it can provide women with the tools to navigate and circumvent those structures. Whether it’s reclaiming time stolen by service creep, establishing yourself as an authority in your field, or accessing valuable knowledge to grow in your career, AI can help you reshape your career.
Guest post written by freelance writer Dakota Murphey.
Website: https://www.dakotamurphey.co.uk/
Email: dakota@dakotamurphey.co.uk