Women need to move beyond simply consuming artificial intelligence and take a more active role in creating and shaping the technology, said Zanele Njapha, CEO and founder of The UnLearners.
Njapha was speaking to ITWeb on the sidelines of the Wired4Women National Women’s Day event in Hyde Park on Friday, where she discussed the opportunities AI presents for women, the barriers that continue to hold them back in technology, and the skills they will need as work changes.
For Njapha, AI represents an opportunity unlike anything previous generations have had. “At no point in history have you been able to think of something and have it built within minutes,” she said.
She believes the accessibility of AI tools means women can now develop products, services and businesses with fewer resources than would previously have been required.
But she warned that women cannot afford to remain on the sidelines as AI develops.
“We're not considered in its creation, which means that it will always be biased against us because we're not part of the development," she said. "We're not part of the dataset that AI is pulling from.”
The lack of representation could also have an economic impact, she said, as women and organisations that fail to adopt AI risk falling behind competitors that use the technology to improve productivity and deliver services faster.
Becoming 'solutionists'
Njapha believes the answer is not simply for women to learn how to use another technology, but to rethink how they work alongside it.
“How do you become what tomorrow calls a bionic human being – one part AI, one part technology and one part human in the way that you integrate it into your day-to-day life?” she said.
This shift will require people to rethink traditional job descriptions and career paths, she noted. Rather than defining themselves by a single discipline – such as AI, cloud, cyber security or marketing – workers should increasingly focus on the outcomes they can deliver.
“We need to become solutionists,” she urged.
The ability to combine different skills and technologies to solve a problem will become increasingly valuable, she said, as organisations rethink how work is structured.
Challenging workplace bias
For women, however, the challenge goes beyond acquiring new technology skills.
Njapha said workplace systems and reward structures can still favour traditionally masculine approaches to leadership, resulting in women feeling they need to change how they lead in order to progress.
“The systems and the policies that we create do tend to be quite biased," she said. "That's where we find women then having to act more masculine in order to progress.”
Although she has seen progress in the number of women reaching senior and executive positions, Njapha said organisations still need to recognise the value of different leadership approaches.
She argued that diversity should not be treated simply as a representation exercise, but as an important driver of innovation.
“The business case for innovation lies in how inclusive we are as companies,” she said. “If you're sitting with 16 different perspectives in your exco, I mean, you can take over the world.”
Role models and mentorship
Njapha also urged women to stop waiting for a perfect role model before pursuing careers they want. While seeing women in leadership can help young women imagine what is possible, she said the absence of a role model should not become a limitation.
“Look at the women who are there, but go, ‘What's possible still?’” she said.
She added that mentorship and sponsorship can play a different but equally important role – not as a substitute for role models, but as a way to open doors and accelerate careers.
Njapha, who began her career as a primary school teacher before moving into corporate work, said a mentor played a major role in helping her recognise that her skills could be applied in a different environment.
“A mentor not only puts you in front of the right people, but they push you to walk through that door."
Adaptability
Ultimately, Njapha said the most important skill women can develop is the ability to adapt.
“The meta skill is our capacity to learn and unlearn and relearn,” she said.
As AI, economic pressures and other forms of disruption continue to reshape the workplace, she said professionals must become comfortable with uncertainty rather than trying to predict exactly what comes next.
“The world is at that place where nothing is going to slow down ever,” she said.
For Njapha, preparing women for the future of technology requires more than teaching technical skills. It means challenging outdated workplace systems, creating greater access to opportunities and developing the confidence to continually rethink what is possible.
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