This paper examines how legitimacy mediates the relationship between structural inequalities and women's digital leadership (WDL) in AI-enabled workplaces. It focuses on how academic and organizational knowledge constructs inclusion and exclusion, particularly through structural inequality, algorithmic bias, and governance related to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 5 and 10.
The study combines a systematic literature review, science mapping, and variable science mapping of 581 Scopus-indexed journal articles published from 2000 to September 2025. Article-level verification identified 27 potential integrative matches, of which three substantively addressed women or gender, leadership or managerial authority, and AI-enabled or digitally mediated workplace systems concurrently. These three studies constitute the direct WDL evidence, whereas the wider 581-article corpus maps the interdisciplinary foundations surrounding this emerging domain.
Evidence from the three-study direct core indicates that gender, managerial authority, and digitally mediated workplace systems rarely converge within a single empirical design. The broader interdisciplinary corpus identifies recurring structural, technological, and institutional asymmetries, together with reflexive leadership, responsible AI governance, and inclusive institutional redesign. Integrating these adjacent patterns through organizational legitimacy clarifies how resource allocation, decision processes, meaning-making, and normative validation may shape WDL across global, national, organizational, and individual levels.
The paper offers a legitimacy-centered synthesis of WDL in AI-enabled workplaces. Its contribution is conceptual rather than causal: it explains how intersectional positions, organizational power, and AI-mediated knowledge may jointly shape recognition and exclusion. This framing connects diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI) research with organizational legitimacy and critical algorithm studies.
