Women May be the Real Losers in AI Automation

A great disparity in women in leadership positions continues. The women in technology debate has heated up again as major tech companies have more women in leadership, than they do in technology positions themselves.

Which, doesn't really make sense?  Since, we are in an unprecedented age of customer-centricity, where product design, user interactive content marketing, brands that are emotionally intelligent, teamwork of software engineers and customer success is now more important than ever. 

Now there are a number of indications that in the post-automation world, it's women who will be hardest hit in job losses.

Gender has to be on the agenda, as according to the World Economic Forum’s latest The Future of Jobs report, 5.1 million jobs will be lost by 2020 via disruption (robots & AI) in 15 leading countries that will be bad news for women. 

THE AGE OF AUTOMATION SET TO BEGIN 

2017 in many ways, marks the beginning of the age of automation, a period of rapid transformation of technology that reshapes society.

Algorithms, more integrated software, machine-intelligence scaling to specific job functions, will be changing the workplace like never before. 

For every job lost to automation, approximately 40% of those can result in new jobs created, however in the tech industry itself, the first wave of casualties will likely be women. Jobs such as sales, office, admin roles, etc... 

WOMEN AREN'T CATCHING UP 

There hasn't really been progress for women in technology, one of the reasons we are still talking about it, but how to adapt to the arrival of robots in a man's world? At perhaps the most important company for the future, Google, only 22% of leadership roles belong to women. 

In the AI age of automation, quality of life is set to improve, at the peril of potential unemployment and a great change in the workforce and global economy.

As inevitable as driverless cars, the Atlantic argues that increasing automation might favor women who thrive in more chaotic environments where social and creative skills come to the fore in a more automated startup or office environment. However are we to believe this will truly be the case?

AUTOMATION AFFECTS ALL OF US

Women in positions of being minimum wage workers could lose jobs due to automation. HR could and will be significantly automated as well as clerical roles, both heavily impacting women and women in technology in general. 

If as Oxford researchersreport has indicated is right, that approximately half of jobs in the U.S. are susceptible to replacement by automation.  The higher proportion of routine tasks a job has, the more likely it can be automated. That's how many young Millennial women and single mothers?

SOCIAL ROBOTS ARE COMING 

With the arrival of Pepper-esque “social robot” creations, the idea that routine-centric jobs alone are at risk will be shown to be false. In fact some of the machine-intelligence that is coming out, is out-performing white collar specialists at their highly specialized jobs.  

How long will it take AI to become social interaction able, 5 years, 10 years? It's only a matter of time in an exponential age of technological adaption. 

With automation primed to enter health-care, and an EdTech age of innovation looming, nurses and teaches can be expected in the 2020s to be put under pressure. Traditionally professions with a high percentage of a female workforce are precisely the industries likely to be targeted for automation. 

MEN BENEFIT FROM AI

Furthermore in technology and innovation itself, while automation will lead to a net loss in jobs for women, men will gain a net increase in jobs because men, relative to women, occupy more of the jobs in growing STEM fields – further exacerbating gender gaps in employment.

The existing bias in STEM fields therefore is only magnified by these disruptions and the status-quo is multiplied and passed down to the future workforce. 

Many of the jobs created by automation will be biased to favor men, magnifying current norms of the gender distribution in the workforce.  

The "socially intensive" roles of women in business are not safe. The World Economic Forum predicts that those in office administration will face the greatest number of job losses and this happens to be a sector with a significant majority of women.  From clerks in banks to secretaries, to sales associates in retail, women are set to be set back in the next decade in terms of unemployment. 

TRIPLE THREAT 

Not only do women pay more for many products in our society (like clothing, beauty, health), and must face existing job discrimination and bias, as evident in women in technology, the future of automation may put women under more duress in the age of automation which is set to increase exponentially over the next decade. 

Today, just 18 percent of U.S. computer science college graduates are women. That’s down from 37 percent in 1985 and far behind India, for example, where women account for more than 40 percent of computer science graduates. 

ADVENT OF "SEXIST ROBOTS"

The future of automation doesn't just threaten women in technology, it magnifies the entire issue of gender inequality from equal pay to more vulnerable sectors that will adapt with the arrival of AI, robots, etc...

That working in STEM is not female friendly is well-known,  as a 2014 Center for Talent Innovation study published by the Harvard Business Review found that women working in STEM fields are 45 percent more likely than their male colleagues to leave their industries within a year.

This leaking pipeline is real, and if robots are being "made by men", how much can we expect them to benefit women? Implicit male bias will be programmed into the AI and the very code of the future itself. 

CONCLUSION 

That we are at a crucial crossroads in the future of women in tech, is the reason we are still taking about this. With an age of automation ahead, how this impacts women and gender equality is an important consideration as any.

It's the same old story, with women being more or less excluded from an industry that is changing every part of our life, we don't just run the risk of further exacerbating gender inequalities but creating a future that perpetuates social injustice and empowers the high-tech world to continue to be like an all-boy video game club culture that ultimately hurts women, families and our future. 

We don't just run the risk of further exacerbating gender inequalities but creating a future that perpetuates social injustice and empowers the high-tech world to continue to be like an all-boy video game club culture that ultimately hurts women, families and our future

Given that a handful of major tech companies are in the driver's seat of our future, if the women in technology issue is not resolved, the impact will be felt for decades to come in the AI and robots we create. 

Do you believe the age of automation has the potential to hurt women more than men?