ASEAN moonshot: AI and women

I have been in rooms about women’s economic empowerment for a long time, and I have learned to notice the moment a conversation turns from talk to something that might actually move. This year, as the Philippines hosts ASEAN, I feel that moment gathering. The elephant in the room is a quiet one: what happens to women at work as AI makes its dominating entrance?

The private sector, led by the ASEAN Business Advisory Council (ASEAN-BAC), with the Philippine Women’s Economic Network (PhilWEN) as its Knowledge Partner, has scheduled two roundtable discussions during our hosting year. Here’s initial data. Thailand, where women are 42 percent of the tech workforce, and Singapore, at 41 percent, show us what is possible. Across ASEAN, women hold 32 percent of tech positions. Take those two out, and the remaining eight economies average just 22 percent. Behind that low percentage point is a woman who studied hard, sat through the exams, and then somehow did not arrive.

This data guided PhilWEN’s round tables discussion, the “Women’s AI Talent Moonshot, which aims to help strengthen the ASEAN Digital Masterplan 2030, the blueprint for governing a trillion-dollar AI economy. I love the title “Moonshot” so apt, not only because the moon stands for women, but also that “going for the moon” is an extremely ambitious goal, one that seems almost out of reach but is worth pursuing because of how much it could change things.

Singapore and Thailand each found their own way of moving the needle. The Philippine Moonshot asks every member state to find its own, and to move from 32 percent to 45 percent women in the AI and tech workforce by 2030. PhilWEN’s attempt to bring stakeholders together was not meant to be mere conversations. What PhilWEN hopes for is harder: governance and institutional commitments, with real enforcement pathways in private companies, government agencies and institutions. We have all attended enough forums to know the feeling of leaving a good discussion with nothing changed. There has been so much talking. Now it is time to MOVE.

PhilWEN’s first partner is SGV & Co./Ernst & Young Global, who published their recent research entitled Navigating the Future Together: The Power of Women in Shaping ASEAN’s Future. The study places women’s economic advancement within ASEAN’s broader agenda of inclusive growth, digital transformation, productivity and sustainability. The pathways differ for each member state, but one truth runs through all of them: women’s participation must go hand in hand with clear routes to higher-value roles. The digital economy is central to ASEAN’s future, yet half of its people are not being fully tapped.

The roundtable looked at three themes. The first is about the seismic shift AI is bringing into the workforce and totally disrupting work. When AI changes the jobs women hold in your organization, what is actually there for the woman doing the job? I think of the women in clerical, administrative, customer service and support roles, the very work AI automates first. In the Philippines, much of it sits in the BPO and outsourcing sector, where women make up much of the workforce. Has anyone mapped where AI fits into these jobs? Every company can look honestly at its roles by gender and by AI exposure: which jobs will be augmented, which replaced, and who holds them?

Then comes the gentler question: who is showing these women how to use AI? Too often the training goes to those already on technical or managerial tracks, and the women whose jobs are most at risk are the last to be upskilled. We can do better with hands-on learning, with champions and “buddies” mentoring. Gender inclusive trainings must happen during work hours, because “after hours” quietly means “not for to close. She may be a mother. She may be of the sandwich generation, caring for children and aging parents at once. She may be raising a child with special needs, or live where connectivity is unreliable. How do we build pathways into the AI economy around these realities? We begin by naming them, and then respond with the practical: flexible and hybrid schedules, training in work hours, childcare and eldercare support, learning that works on low bandwidth. These are not favors. They are how a company keeps its best talent. So please look at who write your company rules. There better be women in that group!

One suggestion of the round table was to create a professional group of Women AI Safety and Ethics then pump training for skills and leadership there. I thought this such a great idea because I remember when the Sustainability Officer role in a company was first created. That was new, then, but necessary to have a professional responsible for guiding the organization’s efforts to operate in an environmentally and socially responsible way while remaining financially viable. So why not Women AI Safety and Ethics Officer? To safeguard that for every AI or tech direction, that the gender lens is naturally applied there. We need AI women professionals with the courage and ability to question what a model produces, and the wisdom to know where human insight must stay.

I keep returning to one thought. In our ASEAN region today, AI and tech upskilling for women must be the default, not the exception. Access and training create the greatest value when they are directly tied to employment, career progression and enterprise growth. Technology will keep changing. The question is whether we will have built a world where every woman is able to change with it. I would like to believe we will. The moonshot, after all, begins with the decision to leave the ground and create change.