Dear Editor,
We often tell girls that the future is in “STEM,” as if enrolling in a few more science classes and joining coding clubs will solve the problem. However, the real issue in the era of artificial intelligence is not access; it is agency. Without agency, access merely produces consumers, while a small minority become owners.
I am a woman and a mother of two young daughters, possibly more if God allows. I am concerned about the technology-related ecosystems being developed in the Bahamas for my children and their peers. In this letter, I will focus on Artificial Intelligence, which I see as a crucial indicator of future challenges.
First, we need to expand STEM to STEAM, as Art has become an integral part of the AI ecosystem.
A new divide is forming in real time: the gap between people who consume AI and those who can command it.
AI is not just another technological trend. It is a general-purpose capability that will be embedded in every sector, including tourism, banking, construction, education, health, public services, and small businesses. When a tool becomes that foundational, the winners are not just the users but those who can direct it toward meaningful outcomes: building solutions, designing systems, creating products, and owning intellectual property.
In short, the future will reward builders.
If we want young girls and women to thrive, our national goal cannot simply be to “teach them to use AI.” It must be to “position them to own the value created with AI.”
This begins with telling the truth about the changing job market. Employers are no longer just hiring for degrees; they are hiring for the ability to produce. AI accelerates the pace of work and lowers the cost of experimentation. A small team, sometimes even a single person, can accomplish tasks that once required an entire department: drafting business plans, building prototypes, creating marketing assets, automating workflows, and testing products in real-world settings. AI compresses time, multiplies output, and rewards initiative.
However, if we introduce girls to AI primarily as a shortcut for homework, we will end up training a generation to consume answers rather than engineer outcomes. They will become prompt-users instead of problem-solvers, learning to ask AI for content without understanding how to verify, refine, test, and deploy.
The goal of STEAM in 2026 is not just to learn subjects; it is about learning to produce.
So, what does it mean to transition girls from being users to owners?
It means upgrading STEAM into four key literacies:
STEAM Literacy: The ability to reason, measure, test, and design, using science and math not merely as “schoolwork,” but as tools for understanding and improving real systems.
AI Literacy: This entails competence, not hype or fear, about how to prompt AI, evaluate outputs, check facts, recognize limitations, and protect privacy.
Entrepreneurial Literacy: The skills to identify real problems, interview users, build minimum viable products, price them, and distribute them effectively.
Ownership Literacy: Understanding how to create assets, brands, products, workflows, data tools, and intellectual property that can generate revenue and scale.
This is how to future-proof young women. Instead of pretending they can predict the economy, we should ensure they can build value in any economic climate.
The best way to teach these concepts is not through theoretical coursework but by tackling real problems and executing real pilots. In a tourism economy, girls could develop AI-powered visitor guides for small hotels and local experiences, multilingual, accurate, and designed for practical use. In climate-vulnerable communities, they could create storm readiness tools, resource maps, or alert systems. In small businesses, they could design invoice automation, procurement trackers, customer service chat assistants, and inventory reminders. In the health sector, they could develop plain-language patient education tools and appointment-navigation assistants.
These are not just “cute projects.” They are prototypes for potential enterprises.
This is where the ecosystem must evolve.
Families should normalize building. Celebrate experimentation, not just good grades. Encourage girls to create: design, code, write, and prototype, rather than only consume.
Schools need to become creation labs, not just exam factories. Every student should produce something: a prototype, a demonstration, a service, or a product, not once in a lifetime but every term.
The private sector and government should fund the bridge between learning and earning through micro-grants for pilots, paid internships tied to deliverables, mentorship programs, and partnerships where real businesses present genuine problems to students, agreeing to test what they create.
Moreover, safety must be a priority: digital privacy, consent, and AI ethics cannot be afterthoughts. We can empower girls while also protecting them if we choose to create that environment.
Here is a practical ambition that any serious country can adopt: every girl should graduate with at least one completed project, something that has been tested by real users, and the support to transform that project into a paid pilot if it proves successful.
Not every girl will become a founder, and that’s not the main objective. The goal is that a girl who can build, test, and launch solutions will never feel powerless in a changing economy. She may choose employment, but she will not be trapped by it. She will negotiate differently, earn differently, and lead differently.
The AI era will amplify whoever can truly harness its potential.
A Firm Believer in Concepts becoming Creations,
Eden Merry Johnson
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