Overview
According to a report by McKinsey more women than men stand to lose their jobs by the end of the decade because of the rise of artificial intelligence and automation. Food services, customer service, sales, and office support roles (which generally tend to employ more women than men) will be more affected. Women from diverse backgrounds, without education and from disadvantaged segments of society will be at risk, as well as the youngest and oldest female workers.
AI and How It Can Help Progress Opportunities
On the upside AI radically reduces the manual gathering of data, report creation and synthesising of hypothesis and conclusions – thus freeing time up to focus on connecting with peers and stakeholders in the business. It is allowing women to focus on more strategic aspects of their jobs rather than the tactical and operational roles. Quite simply it is helping them to find their influence and their voice.
If women have been relegated to admin tasks, but possess more potential, the revolution of AI in the workplace will allow them to compete with their male counterparts through unbiased AI recruitment process. Thereafter it is up to the culture of an organisation to identify those skills and allow them to flourish through unbiased promotion opportunities.
Being freed up from demoralising, repetitive and brain numbing tasks may kick start the dormant, innovative and creative processes within women and reboot their career potential by seeking education and training in a new discipline.
UNESCO studies have found “only 18% of authors at leading AI conferences are women and more than 80% of AI professors are men”. 22% of AI employees globally are female, leaving a gender and skills gap. Women make up 49.6% of the world’s population so without a representative and proportionate number of female engineers, researchers and developers in AI – the products and services won’t be truly reflective of the way we all live.
We have to encourage women to enter into AI careers to address the bias which exists in all aspects of this employment arena – from recruitment to training and development through to promotion. The answer to this lies in education – by encouraging more young women to pursue a career in STEM subjects – so that they can enter into AI roles. Sadly, there is evidence that attracting and maintaining women in the AI sector is a challenge – as it is currently a male dominated environment, suffering gender pay gaps and limited female role models and mentors to encourage and support females on their career paths. By balancing out representation I believe we can ensure products are designed and programmed to neutralise any pre-existing bias that exists .
Finally a word on using AI to combat workplace harassment. As a large portion of our communications are now electronic employers can now adopt AI to monitor employee communications for harassing language and behaviours, and offer up apps to employees which allow anonymous reporting of worrying behaviour.
‘MeTooBot’ technology utilises AI to monitor communications, analysing everything from speech patterns to attachments and the timings of messages being sent. This supports investigation and the management of offensive communications during the early stages of the process, without the victim having to report the incident to a manager or engage in the daunting complaints processes within large organisations.
Conclusion
AI takes away the time consuming, administrative and repetitive tasks from a role and does so with speed and accuracy – reducing the impact of human error. It also has predictive reporting capabilities and can spot trends and opportunities. This will empower women to focus on the more strategic aspects of their jobs and influence with facts and data – thus allowing them to find their voice, apply for roles they never thought were possible and be protected during periods of bullying and harassment from the opposite or same sex.
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