The gender gap is an abiding phenomenon that affects our society along many dimensions, including a lack of equality in wages and salaries and unequal representation in jobs and education. It is a global reality that women experience inequality in many aspects of their daily lives in both developing and developed countries. Inequality in the workplace affects women socially and economically and one way to begin to narrow the gender gap may lie in technology and digital culture.
A recent study done by the World Economic Forum (WEF) on the future of jobs around the globe looks at industry gender gap profiles and discusses the effects that the so called “Fourth Industrial Revolution” will have on women in the workplace. The WEF found that although the expected overall global loss of jobs will affect men and women relatively equally (52% for men and 48% for women), due to the fact that the number of women in the workplace is much smaller than men, this loss of global jobs will disproportionately affect women and widen the gender gap. Additionally, this Fourth Industrial Revolution will see the end of the types of jobs that have proportionally higher numbers of women workers, and the addition of new jobs in fields where women are traditionally underrepresented.
Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math-- or STEM-- are the fields in which women are woefully underrepresented. Whether you agree with the argument of technology as culture or that of gendered technology, the fact remains that our current digital culture is seeing a growing gender gap that needs to be closed. Women globally earn less than men for doing equal work and are a disproportionately small percentage of the global workforce. One way that we can work to change this is by finding ways to use the same digital culture and technology to close the gender gap. Research by companies such as Accenture has found that increasing digital skills and literacy in girls and women can help to narrow the gender gap. Increases in digital and technological fluency allow women workers to gain skills to prepare them for work and advance them in their careers, especially in STEM fields. Accenture proposes that governments, institutions, and businesses work to encourage and support the digital fluency of women and girls globally in order to close the gender gap more quickly.
Giving women and girls the opportunities to develop these skills on a global scale is a massive undertaking. The status quo of male-dominated STEM fields will cause many problems along the way, which is why it is important that the effort garner support from as many organizations as possible from national to local governments, from elementary to university education institutions, and from the business sector.
- How can we encourage women to get more involved in STEM fields?
- How can we change the status quo to embrace gender equality in STEM?
- Why is it important that we work to close the gender gap?
- Do you see other areas where involving women and girls in the digital and technological culture can work to close a gender gap?
Getting to Equal: How Digital is Helping Close the Gender Gap at Work- Accenture research. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.accenture.com/us-en/gender-equality-research-2016.aspx?c=glb_intwdfy16accn_10000005
Jones, S., & Veto, J. (2016, March 3). Digital Skills Help Narrow the Workplace Gender Gap, Accenture Research Finds. Retrieved from https://newsroom.accenture.com/news/digital-skills-help-narrow-the-workplace-gender-gap-accenture-research-finds.htm
Leopold, T. A., Ratcheva, V., & Zahidi, S. (2016, January 18). The Future of Jobs. Retrieved from http://reports.weforum.org/future-of-jobs-2016/
Turk, V. (2016, February 26). The Silicon Divide: Pitch Us Your Stories on Tech and Gender Equality. Retrieved from http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-silicon-divide-pitch-us-your-stories-on-tech-and-gender-equality
Zillman, C. (2016, January 19). For Women, The Future of Work Is Looking Bleak. Retrieved from http://fortune.com/2016/01/19/world-economic-forum-women/
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