For decades, research has documented how systems built around a male default quietly fail women. Medicine is the clearest case. Emergency protocols calibrated on male patients, from the warning signs of a heart attack to the treatment that follows, have measurably worsened outcomes for women presenting with the very same condition. The lesson is not that biology is destiny. It is that when we design for one group and assume it stands in for everyone, the people left out of the design are the ones who pay.
Artificial intelligence is about to test that lesson at scale. AI learns the world as it already is, asymmetries included, and then reproduces it faster and with far greater reach. That is why capturing the female perspective on AI, across public policy, innovation, and everyday life, is not representation for its own sake. It changes what the technology is built to do.
This was the premise of “Women Leaders in AI,” a forum organized by the Latin American Telecommunications Alliance, held in February 2026, with 21 presentations by 22 women experts from across the region. I analyzed the full set of presentations using qualitative coding (NVivo), and one finding stood out above the rest: when women lead the conversation about AI, the questions change. And changing the questions changes the course.
That is the sense in which the algorithm has a gender. Not as a slogan, but as an observation about who gets to define the problems a technology is asked to solve. Recognizing it makes AI more sophisticated and more capable of real social benefit, so that the daughters, mothers, sisters, and colleagues who make up the majority of Latin America’s population inherit a better future, and not a more efficiently automated version of the same exclusion.
An unavoidable truth is that AI is occupying ever-greater space on the public and corporate agendas of the region. Yet behind the promises of innovation, automation, and economic growth, an uncomfortable reality emerges: without adequate digital infrastructure, the benefits of AI will remain out of reach for millions of people.
The speakers agree: the main barrier to AI development in the region is not a lack of applications or business interest, but limitations in connectivity, high-capacity networks, data centers, and effective internet access. In other words, a truly inclusive AI strategy cannot exist if large sectors of the population remain disconnected.
The paradox is plain. Rural areas, indigenous communities, and historically excluded territories are precisely those where artificial intelligence could generate the greatest benefits in education, health, agriculture, and public services.
Yet these are also the places where digital infrastructure remains most inadequate. Regrettably, this is the flip side of a story well known across the region, one in which, after more than four decades of debate over how to close the digital divide, little has been achieved to make telecommunications services more affordable for the lowest economic quintiles of the population.
The digital divide follows the pace of technology and evolves over time; its new vehicle for creating asymmetries is AI, continuing the historical formula that has yielded such results, one that every government in the Americas knows all too well. Digital exclusion encompasses the lack of adequate devices, technological skills, and the capacity to use available tools effectively. Some specialists have begun describing this situation as “digital poverty,” a new euphemism for the same old disease: households lacking the minimum conditions to fully participate in the digital economy.
Unfortunately, the regional problem is multifaceted. Only a small proportion of Latin American citizens conduct public transactions online; the region receives a minimal fraction of global AI investment; and its participation in the global specialized talent pool remains limited. This constrains both the adoption of new technologies and Latin America’s capacity to develop its own solutions.
Women face additional challenges within this divide. Gender inequalities combine with factors such as rurality, age, disability, and care responsibilities, creating barriers that restrict access to digital opportunities. At the same time, various studies warn that women are among the groups most exposed to the effects of labor automation, which heightens the urgency of strengthening their digital capabilities.
For these reasons, the discussion about AI cannot be confined to technical matters. Regulation and governance emerge as central elements for ensuring that these technologies generate broad social benefits rather than deepening existing inequalities. This has translated into a trend in which an increasing number of countries in the region are advancing national AI strategies, though significant differences persist in implementation levels, funding, and evaluation mechanisms. The trend points toward models that seek to balance innovation, human rights, risk management, and universal access. The challenge is turning the language of the law into visible action, so that efforts do not reduce themselves to theorizing about needs but instead work to eradicate them.
Achieving this is no easy task. In Latin America, developing talent in technical fields, particularly among women, is emerging as a major strategic challenge. The region faces a growing shortage of professionals specializing in artificial intelligence, even as business demand continues to rise.
Yet the regional conversation goes beyond the mere need to train programmers or engineers. Attention is increasingly focused on developing human competencies that are difficult to automate: critical thinking, creativity, analytical capacity, ethical judgment, and an understanding of complex social contexts. This vision recognizes that the future of work will depend not only on mastering technological tools, but also on knowing when to use them and when human judgment is required.
Another issue gradually gaining prominence is digital sovereignty: how the region’s growing dependence on external technological infrastructure calls into question its capacity to participate autonomously in the global digital economy. The goal is to prevent geopolitical concepts from the last century from evolving into digital neo-colonies or a binary cold war in which data creates borders distinct from geographic ones, or from exacerbating those that already exist within a single country’s boundaries.
The women’s voices remind us that Latin America holds important competitive advantages in energy, natural resources, and geographic location that could position it as a significant player in the global expansion of data centers and AI-associated services. But these assets are not enough; they must be used in a coordinated, efficient way that fosters productivity rather than squandering it on anachronistic promises.
Ultimately, artificial intelligence represents a historic opportunity to accelerate Latin America’s economic and social development. However, the final impact will depend on how the region addresses problems it has carried since the days of analog networks, copper cabling, and the dominance of geostationary satellites: investing in infrastructure, reducing digital divides, strengthening human capabilities, building adequate regulatory frameworks, and ensuring that the benefits of innovation reach the entire population. As has always been the case in telecommunications and digital technology, the real conversation about AI is not purely technological. It is a conversation about inclusion, development, and opportunity, one in which the role and voice of women is essential to any aspiration of success.
Methodological Note
This article is based on qualitative content analysis of 21 presentations from the “Women Leaders in AI” event, conducted using NVivo methodology (open, axial, and selective coding). The corpus produced ten thematic nodes and co-occurrence matrices revealing the structural articulations of the debate. Direct quotations correspond to fragments reproduced in the corpus analysis; statistics come from institutional sources cited by the speakers (IDB, ILO, IMF, WEF, ECLAC, UNESCO). All presenters were women.
José Otero has spent 30 years advising regulators and operators in 50+ countries across the Americas, Europe, and Asia on the governance of emerging digital technology. He writes here on the widening gap between what digital technologies can do and the rules, institutions, and infrastructure meant to govern them.
Connect on LinkedIn or reach out at jfo@ICTD.com
