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Automation and digitalisation have sparked extreme shifts in how we work, and the COVID-19 crisis has accelerated these beyond anything we could have imagined. In this article we explore how the global pandemic, automation and digitalisation impact gender equality efforts at the workplace and what employers must start doing today to stay inclusive and diverse tomorrow.
In the fight against COVID-19, women have been underrepresented in crisis management leadership. At present only 28% of managers and leaders are women – a figure that has changed very little in the past 30 years. It therefore comes as no surprise that women account for barely 25% of the members of political and scientific COVID-19 taskforces. At the same time, the implications of the pandemic are impacting women in the workplace disproportionately. It has, for example, created additional pressure when it comes to balancing families and careers. Before the pandemic, 16.4 billion hours were spent in unpaid care work every day globally, with over two-thirds performed by women. Schools and day-care centres, and public services for people with disabilities and the elderly, have been vital support systems facilitating the balance between a career and family. Losing them during lockdown had detrimental effects on women’s careers during the pandemic. One result is that more than one in four women have been contemplating downshifting their careers or leaving the workforce completely. Further, the pandemic is disproportionately hurting sectors and job roles with more female employment. People working in lower-paid, contact-intensive sectors, for example accommodation and food services, the arts, entertainment and recreation, have been hurt the most by the large-scale closure of businesses and sections of the economy. Globally, 40% of all employed women (roughly half a billion people), compared with 37% of men, are employed in these hard-hit sectors. Employers risk losing women – and future women leaders – reversing years of painstaking progress toward gender diversity.
« Digital transformation and automation disrupt the way we work. Amidst all the changes, equal participation of women in the labour market remains vital for economies to prosper and the employer’s role is crucial to make it happen. »
Technology shifts with a two-fold effect on women
That is why employers are looking for concrete ways to accelerate gender diversity, equality and inclusion, while manoeuvring amidst radical changes. One way to disentangle the complexity is to see how the shifts in technology affect women. Firstly, there is an immediate impact on women’s role in the workplace. Studies have shown that technological shifts will require 40 to 160 million women to move into new roles just to maintain the status quo gender balance. We can say with certainty that technical roles will gain importance. Yet in higher education, young women are strongly under-represented in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and account for less than 20% of STEM university entrants in developed countries. The resulting gap is alarming because these competencies are becoming some of the most valued in the labour market, but are also relevant for improving gender balance at the leadership level. Research has shown that a technical background links to women’s ability to get on corporate boards, with females on boards twice as likely to have a technology-related background than their male counterparts. Secondly, underrepresentation of women as innovators, developers and researchers will lead to bias being reinforced over and over again during early stages of production. As Caroline Criado Perez has shown in her acclaimed book Invisible Women, gender-blindness in tech culture produces what she calls the ‘one-size-fits-men’ approach. This leads, for example, to smartphones being too large for the average woman's hands, speech recognition being trained on recordings of male voices only, or women experiencing cybersickness while wearing VR headsets. Technology is associated with innovation, but too often it reinforces the status quo. There are many examples of biased assumptions going into systems, reflecting the prejudices and blind spots of their creators. Too often they subconsciously view their consumers as mini-mes, ignoring the reality of the (gender) diverse customer base they are supposed to serve.
Moving from why to how
When discussing the topic of gender equality in the workplace with our clients, we increasingly move from explaining the why to discussing the how. There is now a widely shared understanding that gender equality at the workplace is a business imperative and is becoming a means to drive business outcomes and outperform competitors. Mixed sales and marketing teams have a better understanding of customers’ diverse needs and heterogeneous R&D departments are more innovative. That in mind, the urgency to take meaningful action for gender balance and ensure accountability increases.
Upskilling, flexibility and inclusive leadership
Important components of addressing the how are upskilling, flexibility and culture. First, making your organisation fit for the future can be done by investing strategically in technical and digital upskilling. However, for women who continue to be paid less than men and have less free time outside work, employers could consider incorporating active upskilling on the job. Second, leave benefits and flexibility for employees to balance career and work is another important step. Even so, the best policy won’t unfold its potential in practice if the culture isn’t aligned and carers don’t get practical support from their leaders to make it happen. Lastly, inclusive leadership is key. To fully embed an inclusive culture in an organisation requires ongoing effort, equipping leaders with concrete tools and skills to appreciate and foster inclusion in everything they do.
Technology to accelerate D&I
It goes without saying that innovations can play an impactful role in fostering diversity and inclusion amidst technological shifts. One way to accelerate change is to choose an evidence-based approach to decisionmaking. New applications like Power BI, for example, enable data to be tracked and visualised data, moving from previously complex Excel sheets with thousands of lines of data to beautiful and digestible visuals. Thoroughly examining the talent pipeline from a quantitative angle, we can readily understand where additional action, support and input are needed to fix the leaking and blocked female talent pipeline. Furthermore, technology can also help to bring more objectivity to the recruitment process. Examples include augmented writing services that help employers realise how gendered their job postings are, bringing in a more balanced set of applicants. Another example is using artificial intelligence to focus on skills that correlate to the needs of the job, helping to ensure consistency and objectivity in hiring. Lastly, technology can dramatically increase learning efficiency, for example using virtual reality when training employees in soft skills such as inclusive leadership.
Summary
- The global pandemic has had detrimental effects on women's career and has disproportionately hurt sectors and job roles with more female employment.
- Important components of how to address the topic of gender equality in the workplace are upskilling, flexibility and culture.
- Technologies can accelerate diversity and inclusion. It brings an evidence-based approach to the decisionmaking, objectivity in the recruitment process and efficiency in the training process.
Fostering an inclusive company culture
Equipping your leaders with concrete tools and skills to appreciate and foster inclusion is essential. PwC Academy's Diversity & Inclusion Course was designed to upskill professionals from all industries and company sizes with interest in building and managing a diverse and effective workforce.
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