Adapting to change will enable women to be more productive, obtain better-paid jobs, and help bring about gender equality. If they fail to do so, it will be even harder to overcome current difficulties, and gender inequalities will worsen.
A new report from McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), The future of women at work: Transitions in the age of automationunveiled at the 2019 Women Deliver Conference, describes the impact of automation on the global workforce from a gender perspective. The report reveals that 40 to 160 million women - as many as one in four currently employed - may have to change jobs, as theirs will be automated by 2030. This will force them to find more specialized work. The report concludes that if women manage to make these changes, they could maintain or even increase their share of the job market, and would be well placed to find more productive, better-paid work. Otherwise, gender inequality in the workplace is likely to increase, the gender pay gap may widen, and some women may even stop working.
According to the paper, roughly the same percentage of men and women may need to change jobs over the next decade: between 7% and 24% of women currently in work, compared with between 8% and 28% of men. However, a detailed examination of several automation scenarios in six mature and four emerging economies concludes that long-standing barriers will make it difficult for women to find new jobs.
Women often have less time to retrain or seek employment, as they spend more time than men providing unpaid care, have less freedom of movement due to inadequate security and infrastructure, and have less access to digital technology and jobs in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) than men. They also have less access to digital technology and science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) jobs than men.
These problems are a nuisance that has already greatly slowed women's progress. An earlier MGI study concluded that closing the gender gap could add $12 billion to the global economy by 2025. However, in the four years since MGI's first analysis of gender inequality in society and at work, little progress has been made, and women's advances in gender equality at work continue to fall short of equality indicators.
" At first glance, it seems that men and women are participating in the same race towards automation, but while the distance may be roughly the same, women have a weight hanging from each of their ankles. If we invest in removing these weights, women will personally succeed not only economically, but they will also help improve businesses and strengthen the economy." Kweilin Ellingrud, McKinsey senior partner and co-author
Policymakers and businesses need to multiply women-focused interventions to remove barriers. Key priorities include: investing more in training and transition support; expanding the availability of safe, affordable childcare and transportation; breaking down employment stereotypes; increasing women's access to mobile internet and computer courses in emerging economies; and supporting women in STEM fields and entrepreneurship.
" To keep pace with the changing workplace, we need to take further action, without leaving half the population behind, if the world, societies and economies are to prosper. We must invest, in policies, programs and financial measures, in girls and women, so that automation continues to move us forward, not backward."
Katja Iversen, President and CEO of Women Deliver