As many as 160 million women worldwide may need to find new jobs, as robots and artificial intelligence take over roles once reserved for humans, according to consultant McKinsey.
And men won’t escape unscathed, though the roles they lose will be in different fields. For women, much of the impact comes in clerical support positions, such as administrative assistants, 70% of which are held by women. The field, vulnerable to job losses with the emergence of devices such as Amazon’s Alexa, along with service-oriented roles could account for 52% of women’s job losses
“Many others will need to make radical changes in the way they work,” the study found. To make such a shift, “women will need different skills and more education, mobility to switch jobs easily, and access to technological capabilities that will not only be in demand, but can also open up new ways of working and new sources of economic opportunity,” the report’s authors wrote.
Along with the worldwide numbers, McKinsey’s study focused on 10 countries with mature or emerging economies that make up half of the world’s population. Among those nations alone, 107 million women, or 20%, working today could wind up losing jobs to emerging automation technologies. Some 21% of men face the same risk, particularly those in machine operation and craftwork jobs.
In the United States specifically, 24% of jobs held by women and 26% held by men may be taken over by machines. Despite the losses, McKinsey’s study estimated women could gain 171 million positions by 2030, many in the healthcare industry, which is considered to be one of the fastest-growing sectors.
Across the 10 countries that the McKinsey Global Initiative studied, 66% of job gains by women are expected to come in fields such as accounting, nursing, and teaching. For men, 76% of gains are expected to come from machine operation, craftwork, and service as automation replaces old roles in those fields with new ones.
Automation could also help enhance satisfaction in the workplace, according to McKinsey’s findings. Technologies such as telehealth and advanced diagnostic tools may reduce the workload for nurses, leading to improved patient results and higher retention in the nursing field.
