Technology is taking strides of development and it is bound to affect all industries. With more automation and robots taking our jobs, an increase in unemployment rates is going to be a lived reality soon. However, what is disturbing to note is that, more women may be losing out on jobs due to this compared to men. The reasons for this are many, some of which have been found in this study.
A new Northeastern University-Gallup poll shows that women are more worried about losing their jobs to various factors like artificial intelligence, immigration, outsourcing for cheaper labour, etc. as compared to men. The survey shows that artificial intelligence has been reported to have more chances of taking away jobs than immigration.
Further research can list out many reasons why women are likely to lose more jobs to scienctific development. The industries dominated by women are easier to be technologically automated than the ones by men. Even amongst women, women of colour are more likely to be the ones worse hit because of the lack of resources and time available to them to learn new skills and adapt to the new environment. Women are also seen to be less in number in streams like science and engineering which result in them being lesser involved in a modern workplace in the future which necessitates skills in these fields. Even when it comes to highly paid jobs, females standing on these grounds do not seem to be stable.
However, despite all these findings, Northeastern University-Gallup poll shows that more people think of technological advancements as a positive thing for the future than negative. People tend to think that these will have a desirable impact on their lives. What such technological advancements would mean, however, is that we have to become extremely competitive with modern day skills to retain jobs, and the case is especially of concern for the women.
N Malavika Mohan