There is a pattern in the data on AI and entrepreneurship that most coverage tends to flatten: the group using a technology less frequently is also the group benefiting from it more. Among entrepreneurs, women are less likely than men to reach for AI when starting or running a business. Yet when they do, the results are measurably stronger. Understanding why that gap exists, and why it inverts, says something important about the difference between adopting a tool and actually deploying it well.
The Numbers Behind the Gap
Research from Gusto, an online HR services provider, found that 64% of men leveraged AI to launch a business in 2025, compared to 56% of women. The gap extends across specific use cases: men were more likely to use AI to develop business ideas, build or test products and services, set up operations, and handle administrative or legal tasks.
This pattern does not exist in isolation. A separate survey by the Pew Research Center found that while men and women now use AI chatbots at roughly equal rates overall, men remain more frequent users. In 2024, 39% of men had used a chatbot compared to 28% of women. By the time of the most recent Pew survey, that gap had closed, with half of both groups reporting chatbot use. But frequency and context still diverge: 27% of men say they interact with AI chatbots daily, compared to 20% of women. And 40% of men use AI at work, compared to 35% of women.
Men are also more likely to report that AI improved their productivity and creativity. More than a third of male respondents in the Pew study said the tools made them more productive, compared to a quarter of women. These are not trivial differences. They reflect a pattern of deeper, more habitual integration of the technology into daily professional life.
When Less Frequent Use Produces Better Outcomes
Here is what most coverage misses: the adoption gap does not translate into a benefit gap in the same direction. According to the Gusto study, 54% of women who use AI say the technology made it easier and cheaper to launch their business. Among male entrepreneurs, that figure was 47%. Women adopted at lower rates and benefited at higher ones.
Gusto senior economist Nich Tremper offers a plausible explanation. When fewer people in a group use a technology, those who do tend to be more deliberate about it. They have thought through the application, they believe in the tool, and they are more intentional in how they implement it. Tremper’s framing is direct: people reach for the tools they are already comfortable with. If AI is not part of someone’s personal or professional routine, it is unlikely to become a first instinct when the stakes are high, as they are when starting a business.
This suggests that the women who are using AI in entrepreneurial contexts are not casual experimenters. They are, by the logic of the data, more purposeful users. And purposeful use, it turns out, produces better results than habitual use.
What This Means for the Earnings Question
The stakes of this gap extend beyond productivity metrics. The earnings difference between men and women tends to be smaller among the self-employed than in traditional employment. But that relative parity is not guaranteed to hold as AI reshapes what clients expect from freelancers and independent business owners.
Research from Remitly, an international payments provider, found that female freelancers charge 19% less than men offering similar services globally, and approximately 17% less in the U.S. Ankur Tiwari, vice president and general manager of Remitly Business, notes that client expectations are shifting: the assumption is increasingly that freelancers are using AI to deliver more in less time. Those who integrate AI into their workflow free up capacity for higher-skilled, higher-value work. Those who do not risk falling behind on both output and pricing power.
If men continue to adopt AI at higher rates and with greater frequency, the competitive advantage could compound over time, widening an earnings gap that was already present before AI entered the picture. Tiwari also raises the opposite possibility: that AI could flatten the gap by giving more people access to tools for upskilling and learning. The differentiating factor, in his view, will be whether people actually develop those skills or simply assume the tools will do the work for them.
Women in the Pew survey were also notably more skeptical about AI’s long-term trajectory. Female respondents were twice as likely as men to say the technology will negatively affect them personally over the next 20 years. And while 58% of men said AI is advancing too quickly, that figure rose to 68% among women. Skepticism and lower adoption rates tend to reinforce each other.
In Short
The data on women, men, and AI in entrepreneurship does not tell a simple story of a gap that needs closing. It tells a more nuanced one: adoption rates and benefit rates do not always move together. Women who use AI when starting businesses are more likely to report meaningful gains than their male counterparts, which points to the value of intentional, deliberate use over reflexive or habitual adoption. The broader risk is structural. If AI continues to reshape client expectations and freelance economics, and if adoption patterns remain uneven, the technology has the potential to widen existing earnings gaps rather than narrow them. Whether it does will depend less on the tools themselves and more on who develops genuine fluency with them, and why.
Based on reporting from Fast Company - Work Life.