This summer, I celebrated my daughter’s first birthday. A milestone that came with a deep sense of pride and a growing sense of unease.
In that first year of motherhood, while I was navigating physical recovery, sleepless nights, and the overwhelming responsibility of being the primary parent, the world kept turning faster than ever. As I began to poke my head back into social life, one question echoed everywhere. When are you going back to work?
Now add the 2025 caveat – AI.
The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has long documented the “motherhood penalty.” But we rarely quantify its ripple effects. One in two women returning from leave is anxious about re-entering the workforce. About one in six loses her job. One in four earns less than she did before in a market where she already earned 13% less than their counterpart to begin with.
Artificial intelligence adoption, or the lack thereof, will exacerbate this crisis.
Layer that return-to-work anxiety with rising concerns about AI adoption, and we’re staring down a full-scale gender adoption gap, one with serious consequences for Canada’s workforce and economy. This isn’t just about access to tools. Research shows that women’s anxiety around AI is often compounded by subjective barriers: feelings of inadequacy, inaccessibility, and a lack of visible role models or support. When women don’t see themselves reflected in the spaces where innovation is happening (due to being laid off, replaced, or choosing not to return to the workforce), they’re less likely to participate—and more likely to be left behind.
For many mothers, the answer to their return to work plans isn’t straightforward. Returning to work isn’t just a date on the calendar. It’s a full-scale logistical and emotional project. Daycare waitlists. Nanny interviews. Budget spreadsheets. Anxiety about how to merge the old version of yourself with the new. Even with Employment Insurance and job protection, the Canadian privileges, many women spend their leave planning and worrying about their eventual return. And for good reason.
This isn’t a personal issue. It’s a complex systemic failure that requires thoughtful consideration and focus. In an election year, it wasn’t a topic on the table, and perhaps it’s because we’re accepting previous generational mythologies. Today, Canada is far from being the envy of the world in terms of maternity leave benefits in the context of affordability. I won’t get into it if you’re a majority business owner. We are also not the envy of innovation. These two issues are not disconnected but one in the same.
Earlier this week, Katherine Scott from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives published an overview of the 2025-2026 departmental plan. Women’s and Gender Equity’s total budget, which represents 0.08 per cent of total federal expenditures, will fall to 0.01 per cent in 2027-28, dropping by 80 per cent.
The office of Minister Valdez needs to team up with Minister Solom to address this systemic issue, or we will face generational wealth gaps and opportunity gaps for working women in Canada.
The return to work anxiety among women is real. A 2023 survey from the organization Maturn found that 52 per cent of Canadian women felt anxious about returning to work after parental leave. Forty-nine per cent said the most difficult part was feeling like they had to “prove themselves” all over again. Another survey from Moms at Work, a national advocacy group, revealed that 15 per cent of Canadian women who take maternity leave are dismissed, laid off, or not renewed during their leave or shortly after their return. That’s three times the national layoff average.
By 2032, the number of jobs highly exposed to AI is expected to increase sixfold in Canada. According to recent research, nearly 80 percent of today’s female workers are in jobs considered “highly exposed” to GenAI, compared to 58 percent of men. Women are in jobs with repetitive tasks such as sales, administrative, clerical and government occupations. Yet, Harvard’s analysis of 140,000 global users found that for every 100 men using AI tools, only 78 women are. And according to Amazon Web Services, just 55 percent of women believe GenAI tools can help advance their careers, in part because only a third of the AI workforce is made up of women, leading to products and tools that often fail to serve or even consider them.
This is not a minor discrepancy. If women are slower to adopt AI — while being overrepresented in roles that depend on it — we’re not just seeing a gender gap. We’re staring down the barrel of a gender-generational opportunity loss. This is something I think about every day. And while I know that I can take matters into my own hands and set dedicated time aside to learn, individual actions are not addressing the root of the problem, and three-day $5000 executive education programs are not in the average household budget.
We cannot afford to sideline women, particularly mothers, from the future of work.
Canada needs clear mandates to support the re-entry of women into the workforce after parental leave. We need accessible, high-quality upskilling in AI and digital fluency. We need flexible, inclusive work environments that do not punish women for having children, or for being slower to adapt to tools that were not designed with them in mind.
Canada relies on women to invest in building strong families and communities; then this is not the time to stop investing in their futures.
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