“Concerted and creative new solutions are needed to enable women to seize new opportunities in the automation age; without them women may fall further behind in the world of work.” – (McKinsey)
The age of automation, and on the near horizon, artificial intelligence, has provided new avenues for economic advancement. However, this article will highlight that women in comparison to men will continue to face pervasive barriers in the world of work due to automation. If women are able to make these transitions, they could be on a path to more productive, better-paid work. However, we could see employment inequality worsening if women are not able to navigate these transitions successfully.
Automation is radically changing the world of work and both women and men face a similar scale of employment disruption. Whether this is good or bad is entirely contingent on location and occupation.
By no means will automation be all bad, predictions for 2030 in a mixture of 10 developed and developing countries according to Mckinsey, could see over 150 million net jobs added within existing occupations and sectors as a result of automation- the vast majority of which will be in emerging economies.
However, certain occupations are at risk. Women, who dominate roles like clerical support or service worker roles, could face difficulties. These two roles alone could amount to 52% of potential female job displacement. This stems from the fact that these jobs require routine cognitive work which gives them high automation potential. Men will be at risk too, especially those involved in manual roles such as machine operation.
Evidently women and men both face a period of disruption and change and it will be vital for both to develop: 1) the skills that will be in demand; 2) the flexibility and mobility needed to negotiate labor-market transitions successfully; and 3) the access to and knowledge of technology necessary to work with automated systems, including participating in its creation.
One of the critical problems here, however, is that women have disadvantages in all three of these.
Particularly in emerging economies, women not only lag behind men in educational attainment but tend to be less mobile and have less access to tech than men; they also have less IT skills more generally. This is perhaps less salient in developed countries, however even in developed countries there are still big gaps in STEM participation between men and women. To successfully make the transition necessary, women will need more skills and different skills; this could be a critical factor in determining how women fair at the hands of automation.
That said, automation could yield a number of opportunities for women.
Firstly, certain skills could become more important. By 2030, jobs in Europe and the US could require up to 55% more time using technical skills and 24% more time using social and emotional skills- this would be playing to women's strengths. Furthermore, time spent using physical and manual skills and basic cognitive skills will also decrease as those activities are automated; this reducess one of the major advantages men have over women in certain work environments.
Secondly, women could work flexibly. Co-location with colleagues is an important part of working lives today, but technology could reduce the need to co-locate as, for example, telecommuting becomes more widely adopted. The rise of these new, more flexible ways of working is particularly helpful to women because they disproportionately carry the “double burden” of working for pay and working unpaid in the home in both mature and emerging economies.
To round things off it is evidently not all doom and gloom, if women are able to take advantage of these transition opportunities they could thrive; if they cannot gender inequality in work could worsen.
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