Staff Discussion Notes

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Mariya Brussevich, Era Dabla-Norris, Christine Kamunge, Pooja Karnane, Salma Khalid, and Kalpana Kochhar. Gender, Technology, and the Future of Work, (USA: International Monetary Fund, 2018) accessed October 5, 2024

Disclaimer: This Staff Discussion Note represents the views of the authors and does not necessarily represent IMF views or IMF policy. The views expressed herein should be attributed to the authors and not to the IMF, its Executive Board, or its management. Staff Discussion Notes are published to elicit comments and to further debate.

Summary

New technologies?digitalization, artificial intelligence, and machine learning?are changing the way work gets done at an unprecedented rate. Helping people adapt to a fast-changing world of work and ameliorating its deleterious impacts will be the defining challenge of our time. What are the gender implications of this changing nature of work? How vulnerable are women’s jobs to risk of displacement by technology? What policies are needed to ensure that technological change supports a closing, and not a widening, of gender gaps? This SDN finds that women, on average, perform more routine tasks than men across all sectors and occupations?tasks that are most prone to automation. Given the current state of technology, we estimate that 26 million female jobs in 30 countries (28 OECD member countries, Cyprus, and Singapore) are at a high risk of being displaced by technology (i.e., facing higher than 70 percent likelihood of being automated) within the next two decades. Female workers face a higher risk of automation compared to male workers (11 percent of the female workforce, relative to 9 percent of the male workforce), albeit with significant heterogeneity across sectors and countries. Less well-educated and older female workers (aged 40 and above), as well as those in low-skill clerical, service, and sales positions are disproportionately exposed to automation. Extrapolating our results, we find that around 180 million female jobs are at high risk of being displaced globally. Policies are needed to endow women with required skills; close gender gaps in leadership positions; bridge digital gender divide (as ongoing digital transformation could confer greater flexibility in work, benefiting women); ease transitions for older and low-skilled female workers.

Subject: Automation, Gender, Gender inequality, Labor, Technology, Women

Keywords: Automation, Employment incentive, Female labor Keywords: force, Gender earnings Gap, Gender equality, Gender inequality, Global, Job routineness, Job task characteristic, Jobs, Labor force, Labor market, Nonstandard employment, Occupational choice, Routine job task, SDN, Service worker, Task characteristic, Task composition, Task frequency, Technological change, Women, Work arrangement, Work contract, Work responsibility

Publication Details

  • Pages:

    36

  • Volume:

    ---

  • DOI:

    ---

  • Issue:

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  • Series:

    Staff Discussion Notes No. 2018/007

  • Stock No:

    SDNEA2018007

  • ISBN:

    9781484379769

  • ISSN:

    2617-6750