The Future of Women at Work
The age of automation on the horizon offers new opportunities and advancements but women face new challenges brought about by this new phase, alongside long-established issues. Between 40 million and 160 million women around the world may need to transition between roles by 2030, often into higher-skilled positions. To withstand this upheaval, both women and men, need to be skilled, mobile and tech-savvy, however, women face widespread barriers on each and will need specialised support to move forward in industry.
This McKinsey Global Institute report, The future of women at work: Transitions in the age of automation, finds that if women make these necessary transitions, they could be on the path to more productive, better paid work. If they do not, they could face a growing wage gap or be left further behind when the progress towards gender parity is already slow.
This research explores possible patterns in ‘jobs lost’, ‘jobs gained’ and ‘jobs changed’ for women by exploring scenarios of how automation adoption and job creation trends could play out by 2030, for both men and women, given current gender patterns in the workforce around the world.
The research examines six mature economies (Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and four emerging economies (China, India, Mexico, and South Africa), which, in total, account for around half of the world’s population and about 60 percent of global GDP.
