The most reliable way to create the future is to predict it right? Now let’s do the math to see if ‘the future is really female’. Women have greater representation in roles that are being automated a.k.a female dominated. For instance, virtual assistant is now improving administrative efficiency, and the advent of productivity tools and machines are taking over tasks. So, gender roles really did us in!
Here is How
Not enough women are entering professions with wage growth. Women’s skill portfolio needs to move towards capital control; by mastering skills that increase our earning power. Like Technology, Leadership, and Asset control. Women are predominantly in the service sector, and so we must rejig and reinvent the service value chain, to move our efforts from the grey economy and become captured in the GDP. Also, redistribution of our efforts, towards smart work, and high growth industries. No more segregation into low-paying, female-dominated occupations.
There is women’s under-representation in emerging roles. If the future is really female, where are women in the future of work? That is, cloud computing, software engineering, AI, and soft skills.
We are in a transformed economy where the old is giving way to new economy of jobs. Where is the perspective of women? Do you remember the sexist app ‘nipple alert’ developed by silicon valley ‘incubees’ in the movie silicon valley; to alert men on the location of women with erect nipples. Uhmmm… let’s just say they didn’t consider this a sexist idea. Perhaps, if there was a ‘female perspective’ on the team. In the new world of work, the female empathy must be included. There is need for emotional intelligence, and other complementary skills and talents of women must be valued, with the commensurate price on it.
Let’s dig from the Female Gold Mines (Minds)
1. Challenge Norms and Occupational Roles
To address deficiencies, workforce strategies must ensure that women are better equipped with improved skills, or reskilled for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Occupations and sectors are sharply divided along gender lines. For instance, men are reluctant to be nurses because of gender stereotyping. Job displacement insights therefore show gendered division of labor. Women’s jobs displaced (52%) are in services and clerical jobs. In the post-pandemic, between 40 million and 160 million women need to transition between occupations because of the automation pace, and to enter new opportunities, and higher-skilled roles.
2 Bridging the Digital Gender-Divide
In the age of automation, men and women need more than ever to have the right skills, to be mobile and adaptable, and to be tech-savvy. Due to the barriers they face, women lag behind men on all three. Women must graduate in fields where skills will be in high demand. Workplaces and schools must create enable environments for women in the light of work and family juggle. Otherwise these peculiar challenges limit the time they have to reskill, and could also impact their employment journey. Women lag behind in access to tech, the skills to use it, and participating in its creation. The peculiar barriers shortchanging women’s participation in tech must be addressed.
PS: Here is a helpful tool for every female to navigate their work future!