Portrait of the ChatGPT User as a Young Man

A Large-Scale Study Finds a "Staggering" Gender Gap in Usage — And Several Other Surprises

Who's really using ChatGPT for work? The hype (or Utopian) answer is "everybody!" But this study of 18,000 Danish workers found "a staggering gender gap in adoption,” with women "much less likely" to use the tool (20 percent less likely, to be precise). This gap was consistent through all 11 industries, from accounting to teaching, in the study, which surveyed the workers between last November and January.

Moreover, the study's authors — economists Anders Humlum of the University of Chicago and Emilie Vestergaard of the University of Copenhagen — also found that workers who take up ChatGPT are a bit more likely to be those who already have other advantages at work. In other words, not the workers who need the most help.

Why might use of a Large Language Model follow these patterns of inequality?

Part of the explanation may be the effects of longstanding stereotypes about gender. Women respondents were as optimistic as men about the benefits of the tool. But women weren't as certain abo…