(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Co-author: Anu Madgavkar is a member of the McKinsey Global Institute
Digital technology is a two-edged sword for the world's women. The fact that men have easier access to this type of technology means that women are at risk of falling further behind, both financially and socially. But if women take full advantage of digital technology, it will open up crucial opportunities for them.
according to calculations performed by the GSM Association women have an average of 85 percent of men's access to the internet and mobile telephony, and 1,7 billion women in low and middle-income countries are not connected. This significantly limits the future prospects of women and girls.
Possibilities
Digital technology improves women's access to money. The online bank saves them for long trips to a bank branch or ATM. In the same way, technology-driven health guidance via phone or tablet provides increased health benefits as it reaches women in the most remote areas, and they avoid a long and often risky walk to get medical help.
The time-saving potential of digital technologies is so significant that such technologies can make a difference in women's ability to apply for paid work. Today, women take care of three quarters of all unpaid care work. This gives a financial gain of around $ 10 trillion, or 13 percent of global gross product – which is not expressed as income, and far less as economic power. E-commerce and technology-based business operations give women greater flexibility and independence and help them cope with responsibilities in the home, as well as being in paid work. In Indonesia, female-owned businesses generate 35 percent of online business profits, compared to just 15 percent of offline business profits.
Women have 85 percent of men's access to the internet and mobile telephony.
Some of the same can be seen in China, where 55 percent of new online stores are founded by women. Chinese Alibaba's e-commerce platform Taobao has as many female as male business owners. In China, 114 of the world's 147 "self-made" female billionaires live. In comparison, only 14 of them live in country number two, USA.
Strengthening women's financial opportunities is not only good for the women who benefit from it: The McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) has calculated that promoting gender equality could add $ 12 billion to the world economy by 000. Asia / Pacific region alone, getting more women into full-time positions in better-paid and more productive sectors would add $ 4500 billion a year to GDP
- 12 percent above the current development curve.
At the corporate level, it is growing documentation of the fact that more gender equality is good for the bottom line. Variation within leadership improves the quality of decisions. If given the opportunity, women could have been leading innovators in a time of automation and artificial intelligence, helping to ensure that algorithms have no gender bias.
Limitations
However, women face significant barriers when trying to seize these opportunities: In Indiafor example, where only 29 percent of all internet users are women, girls in rural areas often face gender-based restrictions on the use of information and communication technologies, such as in a village in Uttar Pradesh, where they decided to fine all girls using the cellphone outside the four walls of the home.
Social attitudes limit women's access to digital technology.
In addition to the social attitudes that limit women's access to digital technology, it is often the case that women and girls unreasonably lack the necessary skills to seize the opportunities of the digital age. In Singapore, for example, women are worse off than men in the fields of education in the natural sciences, mathematics, engineering and technology. At Nanyang Technological University, women accounted for only 27 percent of students on IT programs in 2015–2016 – despite the fact that half of all university students were women.
What is at stake is not only women's ability to seize the opportunities the digital revolution has to offer, but also their ability to withstand the coming wave of automation. according to research performed by MGI, work equivalent to 800 full-time jobs could disappear by 000 due to automation – only in Singapore. The most vulnerable jobs are the low-paid, who have unskilled labor – and are largely performed by women.
New labor market
At the same time, while many jobs (or tasks within the job) for both men and women can disappear with automation, it also removes some of the wear and tear from today's jobs and adapt them better to human performance. The result can be higher wages that help create several new jobs – 300-365 million worldwide – as consumption increases. Emerging economies in particular will benefit from this. In addition, many of the new jobs will come in areas such as education and health services, where women have traditionally played a dominant role. MGI's research shows that over 100 million jobs can be created in the next 10-15 years because the needs in health and education will increase.
It is not yet clear how automation will affect the labor market for women. But if women's prospects for work and income are to be protected – and even stimulated – there is no doubt that it will require their skills to be upgraded in order to take advantage of the new and varied opportunities that are opening up through the digital revolution that takes place. Women's success in e-commerce is a testament to how digital technology helps to balance differences in the economic arena – for the benefit of individual women, their communities and the global economy. More women in work – especially in technology companies that shape our common future – would be good news for everyone.
article Women in the Digital Revolution was pressed for the first time Project Syndicate, August 2018. Translated into Norwegian by Lasse Takle.
Also read: Social Control 4.0 – China's digital social credit system
