Automation will affect women more than men

A study has found that women are twice as likely to hold jobs that can be automated

Automation is more likely to replace jobs held by women than those held by men, a study by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) think-tank has concluded. The organisation is calling for government action to ensure that the benefits of automation are shared equally between the genders.

About nine per cent of women in work hold jobs that could be automated using robots, cognitive technologies and other approaches, compared to four per cent of men. Almost two-thirds of workers in roles that are considered to have a high potential for automation are women. The IPPR has said that automation could thus widen existing gender gaps in pay and wealth, as more of the proceeds flow to the owners of such systems, rather than workers.

The think-tank recommends a variety of measures to address existing wealth gaps, including extending automatic pension enrolment to those earning less than £10,000 annually, and setting ‘clear' targets for equal rates of employee share ownership between men and women.

The report also found that exposure to the risks of automation crosses age lines, with both younger and older woman susceptible to being replaced. Older women, aged 61-65, are four times more likely to hold such a job than men.

If handled well, though, automation could help to address the inequalities between men and women in the workplace. For example, if businesses were offered support to adopt such technologies, and workers were able to lead the process, women in sectors like social care and retail could see their pay rise and enable them to cut their working time. In addition, productivity gains could have a wider effect across the economy: a rise of two per cent could enable an extra week of holiday, ‘without any loss of output', the report says.

The IPPR report calls for large companies to set a target of 30 per cent representation by women on boards by the end of 2020, with legislation following if this is not achieved. At the same time pay should be raised (with a net effect of increasing productivity) through sector-level collective bargaining; and women should be supported in transitioning to new jobs.

The technology sector is particularly poorly represented in terms of its gender split: only 16 per cent of workers are women (we have been long-time proponents of this issue at Computing, and later this year will hold our first Women in Tech Festival and third Women in IT Excellence Awards with our sister site CRN). The report suggests that firms in the technology space should be required to show progress towards a gender-balanced workforce in order to secure public contracts.

Likewise, academic institutions like schools should be compelled to report gender balance in subject choices above GCSE level, and universities should ‘face penalties' if they fail to recruit near-equal gender numbers to STEM courses.

An interesting suggestion by the report authors is that the new Centre of Data Ethics and Innovation (CDEI) should be given powers to ensure that anti-discrimination measures are built into the algorithms driving automated systems, to prevent them from perpetuating historic gender biases.

Carys Roberts, IPPR Chief Economist and head of its Centre for Economic Justice, said:

"Where automation occurs, it is likely to radically reshape what we do at work, and who benefits from the wealth generated. These changes may well affect men and women differently, because they tend to have different jobs in the UK labour market…

"A more gender-equal future will not happen spontaneously. Realising this opportunity will require a managed acceleration of automation, led by those who could be affected by it."