As Singapore celebrates early productivity gains from artificial intelligence, there’s a conversation about trade-offs that should also be taking place: who benefits, who falls behind, and what new divides may form.
Without that discussion, women will bear the brunt of the costs of AI’s adoption while receiving disproportionately fewer gains.
Globally, women are more likely to work in the roles most exposed to advances in AI. The World Economic Forum finds that women are concentrated in functions that involve routine cognitive tasks that AI can already perform. Meanwhile men hold most of the roles in technology, information and media, the very sectors likely to be enhanced - not replaced – by AI.
Without deliberate choices, AI’s upside will accrue to those already positioned to leverage it with the right skills, networks, and geographic mobility – likely men. Meanwhile, too many women will likely watch their roles disappear or careers stall.
The signs are already there. DBS recently announced about 4,000 job cuts as AI takes over routine tasks, even as it creates 1,000 new AI-related jobs and expands staff training. Similarly, across the tech sector, companies are restructuring teams as AI tools increasingly automate compliance, content review, and other repetitive functions that have substantial footprints in Singapore.
At the same time, the broader labour market shifts. SkillsFuture Singapore reports that demand for AI capabilities more than doubled between 2022 and 2025, and that today’s technologies can automate nearly one quarter of all work tasks. This further validates the reality of the AI-driven reshuffling of tasks, job scopes, and skill requirements.
AI will transform Singapore’s labour market for certain. Whether the transformation will reinforce or reduce existing gender divides remains to be seen.
A widening risk for women in Singapore
AI’s gender imbalance shows up in Singapore’s data. According to the Ministry of Manpower and the Ministry of Social and Family Development, women still earn 14.3 per cent less than men in unadjusted terms, and 6.0 per cent less after controlling for age, education, occupation, and industry.
That may look encouraging on the surface – until you consider where the gap originates. Occupation differences alone account for the largest share of that divide: women and men simply aren’t doing the same work. And those occupational differences are precisely what AI now targets.
Women in Singapore remain clustered in lower-paid, more automatable roles at the very moment AI reshapes that work’s worth.
The mobility penalty
AI amplifies this inequality considering where and how new AIrelated jobs are created. The International Monetary Fund shows that AI-driven job creation often emerges in different sectors and countries from where job losses occur.
AI tends to create opportunities in high-skill, high-adoption economies and industries while displacing jobs in administrative and routine functions elsewhere. This means new roles will not automatically replace the ones being lost – neither by field nor by geography – signaling the potential for AI-driven migration.
That migration increases the complexity for women. Research on dual-career households shows that relocations are more likely to happen in support of men’s careers and that men’s earnings typically rise immediately after relocating, while women’s earnings stagnate or decline.
Women – both local and foreign talent – in a relatively small market like Singapore know this story all too well. The pattern here likely follows a 2024 finding in the US that women were 28 per cent less likely to have relocated for their own careers, while being more likely to have made moves for their male partner’s careers.
If AI-driven jobs cluster unevenly across markets, the inability to move becomes a new accelerant of inequality.
Job transformation instead of role elimination
The 2026 Singapore Budget sets the course for an accelerated phase of AI-powered growth, and this whole-of-nation effort provides a strategic window to embed gender-intention into AI adoption from the outset.
Singapore has built real on-ramps to AI fluency – from SkillsFuture credits to national digital literacy programmes – and these initiatives lay the groundwork for gender inclusive AI adoption.
But government cannot close AI’s gender divide on its own.
Instead of letting administrative roles decline, employers should redesign them as AI-enabled, higher-judgment functions. That means embedding AI copilots directly into workflows and pairing technology adoption with paid, on-the-job upskilling.
SkillsFuture’s own data identifies which tasks are highly automatable and employers can use this intelligence to transition women into adjacent responsibilities that are more resilient to automation.
Job transformation rather than role elimination during AI deployment should be the guiding principle for those who position themselves as responsible investors or corporates with sustainability commitments.
Additionally, mobility should be recognised as a labour market factor, not a private family issue. Employers – especially those in regional and global headquarters – should reduce the mobility penalty on women. This includes adopting mobility-neutral performance reviews, partner placement support, and flexibility not only in office presence, but also geographic location.
Investors should treat mobility neutrality as a material factor when it comes to achieving equality – and hold companies accountable accordingly.
A moment to shape the future
The benefits of AI will only occur if its adoption results in shared prosperity and a resilient population.
Government and business together must channel AI investment into gender-intentional reskilling, role redesign, and mobility-neutral talent policies.
We should celebrate International Women’s Day not by pushing women to the edges of the AI economy, but by working to afford them an equal opportunity to be at its centre.
Megan Willis is senior advisor at APAC Advisors, a Singapore-headquartered consultancy focused on geopolitics and responsible investing. Noemie Viterale is an associate. Steven Okun is CEO.
