The Missing Voice in AI: Give Midlife Women Their Seat at the Table

AI is everywhere, but not everyone’s voice is being heard in shaping it. Artificial Intelligence is redefining every sector. From tech to education, transport to entertainment, every vertical is undergoing transformation at rapid speed. 

But there’s one crucial group being left behind in these conversations. A group who, despite their deep expertise and lived experience, are barely represented in AI discourse. 

Midlife women in wellness. 

While tech headlines obsess over algorithm engineers and venture capitalists, a quieter revolution is bubbling just beneath the surface. It’s happening in yoga studios, therapy rooms, and personalised nutrition consultations. Women in their 40s, 50s, and 60s -coaches, practitioners, retreat hosts – are starting to embrace AI not to scale faceless empires, but to serve, connect, and heal. 

And yet, their stories rarely, if ever, make the news.

Why Midlife Representation in AI Matters 

When AI is shaped only by young coders, corporates, and data scientists, it risks becoming sterile. Detached. Lacking soul. 

Innovation isn’t just about what tech can do. It’s about who it helps, who it excludes, and who gets to shape the conversation. According to the World Economic Forum, only 22% of AI professionals globally are women. That figure shrinks further when you look at midlife demographics or those working outside traditional tech sectors. source 

This matters because AI is increasingly embedded in the way we communicate, market, diagnose, coach, and create. It doesn’t just automate. It amplifies. And when only a narrow slice of humanity is represented, we risk building systems that are unrelatable, inaccessible, or even harmful to everyone else.

The Unique Lens of Midlife Wellness Professionals 

Midlife women in wellness bring a perspective that AI urgently needs: integrity, nuance, empathy, and a deep understanding of human behaviour. 

Many have decades of experience supporting transformation – whether through bodywork, counselling, mindfulness, or integrative health. Their insights into emotional and spiritual well-being, somatic experience, and cyclical change offer rich terrain for the ethical and compassionate use of AI. 

But most of them aren’t digital natives. They didn’t grow up on the internet. 

This creates a barrier. The tech world often communicates in jargon, assuming a baseline of knowledge that alienates those outside its bubble. Wellness practitioners, by contrast, often rely on real-world community, tactile skills, and word-of-mouth growth. Their magic doesn’t easily translate into landing pages and clickable funnels. 

A Tech Tipping Point 

The pandemic accelerated digital adoption across all age groups. In the wellness space, it forced many hands-on practitioners online overnight. Zoom yoga became the norm. Mindfulness went mobile for many, but not all. 

Yet the gap remains: how do soulful, intuitive, professional midlife women confidently integrate AI into their work without losing their humanity and authenticity? 

The answer isn’t just more training. It’s also about reframing the narrative. 

These women don’t need to become data scientists. But they do deserve tools, stories, and support systems that reflect their values, strengths, and ways of working. That means accessible language. That means inclusive design. That means visibility in the thought-leadership spaces where AI’s future is being shaped. 

What Happens When You Centre These Voices 

When midlife women in wellness step into the AI space, incredible things happen: 

• Digital products become more intuitive and emotionally intelligent. 

• Content creation tools are used to tell powerful, healing stories. 

• Automation reduces burnout, enabling practitioners to serve more people without overextending. 

• Online communities grow around shared purpose, ideas and ideals—not vanity metrics. 

Crucially for this demographic, when leaned into and explained with clarity, AI becomes the bridge, not the barrier. It supports the human-to-human connection rather than replacing it. It helps wellness practitioners reach the people who need them most—people who may never walk into a studio but who desperately need support. 

A More Inclusive Future for AI 

If AI is going to fulfil its potential in the wellness sector, it must include the very people it has historically overlooked. 

That means reporting on more stories of women using AI in compassionate, creative, and impactful ways. It means funding education and access for this demographic. It means platforming those who are blending ancient wisdom with modern tech in service of something bigger than profit. 

The wellness world doesn’t need another app or wearable! It requires a reimagining of leadership. 

Leadership where wealth doesn’t mean extraction. Where digital doesn’t mean disembodied. Where visibility isn’t reserved for the loudest, but shared with those quietly doing the deepest work. 

Midlife women in wellness aren’t just adjacent to the AI revolution. They are quietly, and powerfully, becoming the revolution. 

Do not underestimate them. Give them their rightful seat at the table, they deserve it and the world needs them now more than ever.