Women, Power and the Future of Decision Making

2 0 2 6 R E S E A R C H - T O - A C T I O N BRIEF, SPONSORED BY AI-POWERED WOMEN

What emerging research on participation, interaction, judgment and collective intelligence means for the organizations we are building.

Excerpts from contextual note from AI-Powered Women accompanying the report

We are releasing our new 2026 Research-to-Action Brief: Women, Power & the Future of Decision-Making — and everyone in the AI-Powered Women community gets a copy.

At a moment when AI is moving faster than most organizations can fully understand its consequences, research matters. It gives us hard evidence against which to test our assumptions, helps us see what may be happening beneath the surface, and gives leaders better questions to bring into decisions being made right now.

The brief brings together research from Katelyn Cranney, Solène Delecourt and Rembrand Koning across Stanford, Harvard Business School and Berkeley Haas; Dr. Tracy Adams and Sam Zhang through ARF, Marketing Science Institute and Iris Flex; Chief with The Harris Poll; Corrix; and Dr. Nada Hashmi’s work out of MIT on collective intelligence.

It was curated and synthesized by Janett Haas, former SVP of Forbes Research, in collaboration with AI-Powered Women and the participating research teams.

Together, the research raises important questions about who is participating in AI, how AI responds differently to people, whether organizations are confusing usage with capability, how human judgment develops, and whose intelligence actually enters our most important decisions.

Are we building organizations that are simply faster with AI — or more capable because of it?

Fundamental Question Asked:

What role should women play in shaping the future of business?