Skills, Talent and Diversity updates
Sign-up to get the latest updates and opportunities from our Skills, Talent and Diversity programme.
The Agentic Revolution: Why Women are Built to Lead it, but Risk Missing it
The future is agentic. Whether we are ready or not, we’ve moved past simple chatbots and into an era where AI agents can reason, act, and collaborate autonomously. Like any revolution, there will be winners and losers. And while nobody knows the full-scale implications yet, one thing is certain: the Agentic Era requires a specific kind of leadership.
And just in time for IWD, I’m optimistic that the leadership style needed distinctly leans towards female characteristics. But herein lies the leadership paradox.
At AND, we believe the "Next Frontier" of AI isn't about better models; it’s about better orchestration. (Download ANDs’ AI Next Frontier Paper HERE). The move from task automation to scaled AI maturity requires adaptive leadership and the ability to manage ambiguity, listen deeply, and motivate teams through this "new chaos."
Traditional "command and control" leadership is too brittle for this transition. To design an enterprise where humans and agents work in harmony, you need an architect of ecosystems. You need empathy, creativity, and the ability to design transformations. These are the skill sets women have been told for years are "soft skills." In the agentic era, they are the checklist for success.
And here is the problem: we are standing on the edge of a massive AI adoption gap.
We’ve talked about the lack of women in tech for decades. We’ve seen progress, but not enough. The Alan Turing Institute recently highlighted a "troubling and persistent absence" of women in AI, making up just 20% of the UK workforce. When you look at daily AI adoption, the gap widens further and McKinsey's 2025 Women In the Workplace report (HERE) confirms for us that “men receive more encouragement to use AI tools, while women are more likely to miss out, particularly at the entry level.”
This isn’t just a DEI "nice-to-have." This is a crisis of future prosperity. If women don’t lean in now, we could be facing a fourfold failure:
- Skewed Data: Systems built on incomplete perspectives.
- Pervasive Bias: Algorithms that reinforce the glass ceiling.
- Monolithic Skillsets: A workforce that continually fails to reflect the many.
- Stagnation: Leading robots in the same old, tired directions.
It is a bitter pill to swallow: women have the perfect psychological and professional toolkit to lead this workforce, yet we are lagging in adoption.
To bridge this, we have to face the uncomfortable. We have to lean into the fear of the unknown and embrace these new digital teammates, whether we "like" them yet or not. We need to demand the psychological safety to experiment, fail, and learn in real-time.
At AND Digital, our Guide, Build, Equip ethos is as much about people as it is about technology. If we don’t equip ourselves with AI literacy today, we won’t be the ones guiding the strategy tomorrow.
And so this blog aims to give a very clear call to action for women. The next frontier is an open invitation. The "soft" skills of orchestration have become the "hard" currency of digital greatness. By overcoming these adoption hurdles, female leaders are uniquely positioned to architect how the world works in future.
Simply ask yourself, what is holding you back?
About the campaign
techUK’s TechTogether campaign continues with a focus on ‘Evolving Online Safety'. Our insights this week focus on ensuring AI systems are designed, governed and deployed responsibly, with diverse perspectives shaping how technology impacts society, strengthening cyber defences and reducing vulnerabilities as organisations adopt new technologies and expand digital services, and addressing workplace culture, leadership and systemic barriers to ensure diverse voices shape the future of technology.
TechTogether week 4
Other opportunities to get involved:
Other related insights:
