Even as the world comes together to mark days such as Women’s Equality Day, the harsh fact is that there are still many obstacles—especially at the workplace—that hold women back. While women are slowly but steadily creating their own spaces in workplaces, experts suggest that the obstacles they face in the future will require more determination and hard work keeping certain changes in mind. According to a study by McKinsey Global Institute, titled The Future Of Women At Work: Transitions In The Age Of Automation, between 40 to 160 million women globally will need to transition between jobs by 2030—often into higher skilled roles.
To make these transitions smoother, women will need to be more “skilled, mobile and tech-savvy” despite the ingrained barriers women face at workplaces. If the transitions are made successfully, the study calculates, then women have a real chance at getting more productive and better-paid work to bridge the wage gap. The study examined six mature economies (Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the UK and the USA) as well as four emerging economies (China, India, Mexico and South Africa) to analyse if future job automations will impact women at the workplace more than men. It found that women’s jobs may be prone to partial automation rather than being fully displaced due to automations, which suggests that tech upskilling is a key area women need to focus on to minimise this displacement.
Another report by the International Labour Organization (ILO) highlights that overcoming the wage gap and bringing about women’s equality in global economies will require attention to more details than just future automation. The ILO report says that in every economy of the world, “women continue to be paid less for comparable work than men”, which is why the wage gap has narrowed only slightly in the last few decades. The report states that women earn around 50 per cent to 96 per cent of men’s wages even in mature economies, making this wage gap quite noteworthy. Further, the entry of women in the formal economy has not been matched by corresponding improvements in their everyday lives—leading to domestic and care work still remaining a disproportionate burden on women, as even the United Nations has repeatedly pointed out in multiple reports.
This report also points out that even now, women’s employment is primarily focused on specific sectors—pointing at a continued gendering of work—and within those sectors, women are still clustered in lower echelons, rarely making it to managerial or leadership positions. Moreover, a large percentage of women’s work remains concentrated in the informal sector, which remains beyond the purview of labour laws and is therefore more prone to exploitation. Over the last two years, with the COVID-19 pandemic, these inequalities have been exacerbated even more. So, even as we dedicate a day to celebrate how far women have come on days like Women’s Equality Day, the path ahead requires concerted planning and efforts to mitigate inequalities for women at the workplace.