Abstract

Artificial Intelligence (AI) adoption across Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) has gained considerable momentum, and is now being used for faculty recruitment, promotion, workload allocation, research impact evaluation and student assessments. Notwithstanding the objectivity and efficiency that AI brings, its deployment within historically gendered academic institutions raises concerns about the perpetuation and reproduction of structural inequalities. This conceptual paper proposes a governance framework for AI-assisted inclusive leadership focused on gender equality in multicultural teams. AI systems operate within institutional contexts and mediate the relationship between leadership, governance and equity. The paper proposes four institutional solutions; human-in-the-loop deliberation, transparent AI protocols, routine equity audits, and interdisciplinary oversight committees, as mechanisms for mitigating algorithmic bias and enhancing institutional reflexivity. The paper also introduces a four-stage governance maturity framework as an iterative approach to ethical AI inclusion in inclusive leadership of multi-cultural teams. The paper argues that only through a strategic thought-leadership approach to AI inclusion in Higher Education Institutions can structural gender inequalities in multicultural teams be addressed through redesigning of productivity metrics, recognition of emotional and invisible labour, and by addressing gender-embeddedness in institutional systems.