Reese is right: The AI gap is a women problem, and we need to jump on it.
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The Financial Times dropped a survey tracking AI adoption across the US and UK, and they found that the workers most likely to be using tools like ChatGPT and Claude are the best-paid, most-educated, and... mostly male.
Women's jobs are already three times more likely to be automated by AI, and yet women are using AI at a rate 25% lower than men. That's a problem. Daron Acemoglu, MIT economist and recent Nobel laureate, put it bluntly: "AI is going to increase inequality between labour and capital. That is almost for sure." He's talking about capital vs. labor broadly, but for women specifically, the math is even more grim. The International Labour Organization has reported that women's jobs are more exposed than men's to high levels of AI disruption, especially in high-income countries, where clerical, administrative and communication-heavy work is more common.
Reese Witherspoon went viral last week for telling women to get on board. She posted on Instagram saying "the AI revolution has begun" and shared that at a book club of 10 women, only three were using AI at all, and only one felt like she actually knew what she was doing.
The backlash was swift. Authors felt betrayed. People questioned her motives. And sure, the framing of "learn AI or get left behind" isn't the most nuanced entry point into a genuinely complicated conversation.
But the underlying data she was pointing to is real.
Women are less sure if using AI is ethical, less confident using AI tools, and more likely to be in roles that are already being disrupted by them. The asymmetry is twofold: less likely to use the tools, but more likely to be affected by them.
Here's where I land on this: the Circe community isn't sitting on the sidelines. We're builders. And the tools available to us right now (especially our dear friend Claudia) are genuinely good. I use it for strategy, for writing, for thinking through decisions I'd otherwise spend three meetings on. It's not magic, and it's not replacing anything that matters. But if you're not experimenting with it, you're making a choice with real professional consequences.
The women building the next generation of companies can't afford to let a gender gap in AI literacy be the thing that slows us down. When women engage with AI, it accelerates their careers and results in less biased tools that are better for everyone. So it's bigger than just us.
Get on Claude. Play with it. Bring it to your next Circe event. Let's figure out how to use it well, together (which is kind of the whole point of this community anyway.)
Got AI hacks you want to share with the Circe community? Send them our way. We want every woman to be able to say:
"What, like it's hard?"
-Isa and Anna ⊹
⊹ CIRCE DEALFLOW
❝
REPORSENT [Healthtech ]
Raising: Pre-Seed
REPOROSENT is an oncology startup building infastructure capturing what cancer patients are experiencing in between their clinical visits- daily symptoms, side effects, and tolerability data that typically goes unrecorded. They use a 1-2 minute daily check in to turn patients daily experiences into signals for their care. They have now secured a multi-national agreement with a national oncology research network and are now raising to scale.
⊹ TALENT MOVES
Positive AI Labs | AI Benchmark Intern + Ecosystem and Community Intern | Remote
Binti | MBA Strategy & Operations Intern | SF
Email your CV and a statement of interest to [email protected] and [email protected]
⊹ CIRCE MEMBER SPOTLIGHT
Jacky is a D1 runner, Ironman finisher, and the solo founder of Novara. After 15+ years across product and design, she built Novara out of her own frustration: finding people at her pace who felt safe to run with was nearly impossible, especially as a woman in male-dominated outdoor sports.
Novara is a social health platform tackling the erosion of real human connection. It matches people for in-person activities, starting with runs, based on pace, location, and schedule. Each meetup isn't just exercise, it's a trust signal between real humans.
Just launched on the App Store. If you're a runner or know runners who'd love easier ways to find training partners, Jacky is looking for early users, run club partners, and ambassadors. Download here!
⟡ EVENTS
Yoga & Meditation | MAY 14 | Hosted by Circe
Join Circe for an intimate evening of movement, breath work, and reflection designed specifically for the women founders, investors, and operators building the future.
Women In HealthTech + Women’s Health Dinner
An intimate dinner with other women in the space. Email us if you are interested!
See our entire Calendar of events here!
⊹Opportunity: For the technical ladies:
Applications are now open for the 2026 Lilly Grand Challenge: Aging Reimagined — $100K in non-dilutive funding for founders building in mobility, cognition, immune resilience, or regenerative medicine. Deadline May 15. Apply here.
.⊹ Grab Coffee With Us ⊹
Anna Gurney
Circe, Berkeley MBA/MPH, Chief of Staff @ Aura Finance
Topics: Early stage investing, Women’s Health, HealthTech, VC ecosystem, and building founder networks.
⊹ BOOK TIME
Isa D’Elia
Circe, Berkeley MBA, Bizdev and GTM @ Kenley (YC ‘24)
Topics: Applied AI, HR Tech, 0→1 product strategy, and building systems that help teams move faster.
⊹ BOOK TIME
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