Although August is dedicated to women who resisted systems that regulated their bodies, labor, and movement, after 69 years, a new system based on algorithms, data, and artificial intelligence capabilities is increasingly shaping the opportunities, employment, daily lives, and future of women.
This system is predominantly created, funded, and managed by men who, using their inherited ownership of digital infrastructure, increasingly resemble feudal lords rather than founders, while women remain in the minority in this technologically saturated reality. Technology is not neutral; it is embedded in power structures and colonizes the future through them.
The emerging order is increasingly called 'technofeudalism,' where a small number of companies control the digital infrastructure, access to which society is forced to rent. These companies extract value from our data and attention, much like a medieval lord collected rent from the land and its workers. Instead of medieval armor, these technological rulers wear everyday hoodies, managing the servers and platforms upon which everyone depends.
This new order is also gendered, as the people defining the conditions of the AI era are overwhelmingly men, while the burden of these changes falls disproportionately on women, especially girls and women in the Global South.
In the professional sphere, technology is often perceived as a male prerogative. Women frequently tolerate, or worse, actively present themselves as visitors, fraudsters, or impostors, especially when they are older.
This manifests in two ways: firstly, women less often lead technological initiatives, especially in the private sector and startups. Secondly, women are less likely to voice objections to technological solutions adopted by the companies where they work, or as academics and consultants, for fear of appearing anti-technology 'luddites.' There is a general trend towards self-censorship among women in corporate and academic environments.
According to UNESCO, globally, women and girls are 25% less likely than men to know how to use digital technologies for basic needs; only 20% of employees in technical roles at large machine learning companies are women; 12% of global artificial intelligence researchers are women; and only 6% of professional software developers are women.
The study also indicates that women apply for ICT patents 13 times less often and are 4 times less likely to be able to program computers. In South Africa, apparently, women hold only about 23% of technology positions and constitute 13% of STEM graduates (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics).
The most vulnerable to AI-related automation are currently so-called 'blue-collar' jobs—such as administrative support, customer service, translation, junior content creation, caregiving labor, and design—most of which are performed by women. When a chatbot replaces a call center operator in Durban business park, or an AI tool replaces the work of a freelance copywriter and designer in Cape Town co-working space, it is primarily the economic situation of women that is threatened, often without the safety net, savings, or alternative paths that are more accessible to their male colleagues.
Deepfake technologies use AI tools to create fake images and videos of women; deepfake pornography accounts for 98% of all deepfake videos on the internet, and 99% of them depict women. Deepfakes are used as a weapon against women, employed as a mechanism of gender violence, public humiliation, and social control. Although deepfakes target women, they are also active consumers of AI-based dating apps and games, voluntarily providing their data, money, and time to digital suitors in a transaction that reflects feudal tribute of attention.
If South Africa faces severe drought conditions predicted by strong El Niño, while expanding water-intensive data center infrastructures, women, especially poor populations, are likely to experience a disproportionate impact through health and nutrition emergencies, disruption of female education, and exacerbation of unpaid care, as women are often responsible for securing household water supplies. The land that could help women live closer to workplaces, and electricity—to sustain their daily lives—will also become more expensive and scarcer due to the increased share of prime land occupied by data centers and related activities.
Technology and artificial intelligence can contribute benefits for women through algorithmic bias removal in hiring, precision healthcare and FemTech diagnostics, alternative credit scoring, smart home and security systems, and weather detection. However, we should not be forced to use these technologies, compelled to read any content generated by them, or restricted from accessing people who can listen, show empathy, and truly help in banks and other institutions. Especially in Global South countries, including South Africa, where overall access to digital technology and literacy is heavily skewed towards men. South African women demonstrate a 14% lower rate of mobile internet usage compared to men and often live in rural areas, facing their own access challenges.
Technology is a tool, and technology is a choice. Algorithmic serfdom under technofeudal suzerains is not inevitable. AI in its current architecture is a choice, not a law of nature.
As we honor the legacy of women in South Africa, women must move beyond the role of passive consumers or marginalized labor in men's cloud domains. Reclaiming control over technology requires asserting democratic ownership of our data, our bodies, our natural resources, and our future. We must ensure liberating technologies that serve us to guarantee that technological development is fair, responsive, and responsible, fitting the characteristics of the Fifth Industrial Revolution.
Women must own and create a significant share of platforms, funds, startups, patents, data, and computing power. We must ensure digital literacy and inclusion for marginalized and rural girls and women. If women are absent from the development of the intelligence that will shape society, society should not be surprised when this intelligence fails to represent and understand women, or if it rejects these so-called intelligences.
Researchers found that nearly half of the analyzed artificial intelligence systems exhibit gender bias, raising concerns about the potential for increased inequality in hiring, finance, healthcare, and other sectors.
Unfortunately, reality proved more complex. Researchers who studied 133 AI systems across various sectors found that 44.2% displayed gender bias, and about 27.5% showed both gender and racial bias. This study was commissioned by the Haas Center for Justice, Gender, and Leadership.
This bias could potentially affect a wide range of things—from credit card limits to recruitment, online advertising, medical research, and image generation. A well-known example involves Jamie Hanson, wife of tech entrepreneur David Hanson, who claimed in 2019 that her husband's credit limit was twenty times higher than her own, despite joint financial management.
SAPICS, the South African supply chain industry organization, warns: 'While AI itself is not biased, it is a mirror. When it is trained on historical data, AI tools reflect existing gender biases. This is a classic supply chain rule: garbage in, garbage out. If unchecked, AI will not just reflect past inequalities; it will amplify and accelerate them on a larger scale.'
The organization raised this issue during a panel discussion at the recent SAPICS Conference in 2026, where leaders emphasized the need to combat AI gender bias not as a technical problem, but as a priority in culture and leadership.
Conference panelists noted that many hiring algorithms favor male candidates because they are trained on decades of historical data that reflects and reinforces existing inequality. SAPICS added that 'although algorithms do not create bias, their input data shapes the outcome, and this issue may be linked to only 22% of AI and data science specialists being women.'
The rise of AI could also create difficulties for women seeking to enter the supply chain sector, as automation begins to transform entry-level positions. A Gartner study showed that 55% of supply chain executives expect AI advancements to lead to reduced entry-level hiring in the coming years. Since these positions are often the first step toward future leadership roles, narrowing the pipeline at the entry level could limit women's opportunities for advancement.
SAPICS stressed that 'in a profession like supply chain management, which is transforming under the influence of AI at an incredible speed, the impact of this technology on gender equality represents a threat that industry leaders cannot ignore.' It continued: 'While AI is becoming an integral part of modern supply chain operations—including demand forecasting, inventory optimization, warehouse automation, and predictive analytics—it can also negatively affect how women enter and develop in the supply chain profession.'
Supply chain specialist Katrina Tyson believes that the true value of AI should lie not in staff reduction or cost-cutting, but in upskilling and strengthening existing employees. Tyson noted: 'When routine tasks are automated, managers reclaim their most valuable asset: time for reflection, contemplation, and approaching complex problems with creativity and nuance.'
She concluded that AI, when used intentionally as a thinking partner rather than an outsourcing tool, strengthens current leaders by combining deeply human qualities such as empathy, intuition, and consensus with the scale, speed, and power of technology. 'Good AI strategy does not aim to replace talent, but to give exceptional leaders space to truly lead.'
Nevertheless, despite serious concerns about AI's impact on industries, the SAPICS Survey on Women's Leadership in Supply Chains for 2026 revealed some encouraging changes. For instance, the percentage of women facing discrimination decreased from 62% in 2025 to 44% this year, and the percentage of women experiencing resistance when managed by men dropped from 59% to 48%.
