HP Innovation Journal Issue 14: Spring 2020 | Page 47

Reskilling opportunities are particularly critical for
women who hold jobs that involve predominantly manual
and routine work, such as cashiers and garment workers,
and which are most vulnerable to displacement via
automation. At the same time, women are overrepresented
in fields like nursing, early childhood education, and
speech pathology, which require the types of social and
emotional skills that machines can’t replicate. While these
jobs may be safer from displacement, they will also be
changed by automation and AI, requiring new technical
skills and a sharper focus on skills that can’t be automated.
AUTOMATION ALONG THE GENDER DIVIDE
Mekala Krishnan, a senior fellow at the McKinsey Global
Institute (MGI) and co-author of a recent study on
automation’s impact on women, says that by 2030, men
and women can expect to see roughly the same rate—
about 20%—of their jobs automated. However, the report
notes that the types of work men and women do that can
be replaced by automation can be very different because
of gender imbalances in vulnerable fields.
A PwC report shows that women are more vulnerable
through the late 2020s, and especially in administrative
roles—over 80% of office clerks, bookkeepers, and
secretaries in the US are women, based on data from the
Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Through the mid-2030s,
men will face a higher risk as AI evolves to the point
where it can respond and adapt to real-life situations
in jobs requiring physical labor. Self-driving trucks and
other autonomous machinery will then displace truck
drivers and construction workers, jobs that the BLS
shows are over 90% male.
According to a report from the Institute for Women’s
Policy Research (IWPR), the jobs considered the safest
from automation include those that are dominated by
men in engineering and information technology, and
those dominated by women in nursing and teaching.
This underscores the importance of increasing women’s
numbers in STEM fields and the greater value that will
be placed on jobs requiring social and emotional skills.
While automation may not replace these jobs, partial
automation may modify them in beneficial ways.
“We figured out that if we closed
the gender gap by 10%, we would
close the skills gap by 50%.”
— C AROLYN LEE
Executive director of the Manufacturing Institute
MGI estimates that up to 30% of nurses’ time can be
automated, taking over tasks like maintaining medical
records and medical supply inventories. This allows
nurses to focus more on activities like building patients’
trust and improving care. Likewise in schools, automated
technologies can lighten teachers’ administrative
workloads, enabling deeper student engagement and
more personalized learning. And although activities like
collecting and processing data in financial services are
highly automatable, the skills needed to develop and
deepen client relationships are not.
The social and emotional skills involved in these
professions will see further demand in a world of
automated work, taking up to 26% more hours in US jobs
by 2030, according to MGI. “The fact that women are
using these skills in jobs today actually stands them in
good stead going forward,” Krishnan says.
NEW OPPORTUNITIES FOR WOMEN
MGI also predicts that by 2030, nearly 10% of jobs will be
new ones that do not exist today. These new occupations,
as well as the enhanced versions of today’s jobs, will be
increasingly technical, requiring US workers to spend
60% more of their time using technological skills.
Manufacturing is especially proving to be a hotbed of
opportunity. Contrary to popular belief that the industry
continually sheds jobs, demand for skilled talent is so
high that the industry risks having 2.4 million unfilled
positions by 2028, according to a study by Deloitte and
the Manufacturing Institute.
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