Women have a major influence in the field of artificial intelligence. While men still outnumber women, the percentage of female AI talent has increased significantly over the past four years, according to data from the World Economic Forum. And since 2016, the concentration of women working in AI engineering has increased significantly, according to data from Microsoft-owned LinkedIn.
At a time when women are less likely to be hired into leadership roles, GenAI offers an opportunity to close the gender gap, as women work to improve their skills, writes Sue Duke, global head of public policy at LinkedIn. Blog Post.
LinkedIn predicts that the skill sets required for jobs around the world will change by up to 68% by 2030. Many of these will be soft and interpersonal skills required for team leadership, strategic leadership, and collaboration. LinkedIn found that women are 28% more likely than men to have soft skills listed on the site.
Women Leaders
According to LinkedIn data, women are less likely to hold leadership positions than they were last year: In 2022, the global hiring rate for women in leadership positions was over 38%. It has declined every year since, and is now at 36%.
“A slow but steady downward trend is being observed around the world, including in major economies such as the US, UK and France. This decline should sound alarm bells across industries and countries: the proportion of women in leadership positions has increased by less than 1 percentage point in six years (from 30.9% to 31.7%),” Duke wrote.
“Policymakers must encourage companies to take steps to help women advance in their careers and open doors that might otherwise be closed to them.”
“Evidence shows that flexible working policies also benefit women, as women are generally more likely to choose hybrid or remote working roles than men. We know that caring responsibilities can disproportionately affect women, so workplaces need policies that offset this imbalance.”
According to the World Economic Forum, it is 134 years until gender equality is achieved.. The underrepresentation of women in high-paying jobs, such as technology and infrastructure, is one of the reasons for the gender wage gap.
Women make up 28.2% of the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) workforce this year, but the situation is improving when it comes to AI engineering talent, the WEF reported. report While men still outnumber women, the proportion of female AI talent has increased significantly over the past four years.
Explaining the gender gap
The report cites data from LinkedIn which suggests that the gender gap in online professional networks leads to men generally having larger and more powerful networks than women, with strong networks also being associated with greater chances of career advancement and more contact with recruiters.
When it comes to future readiness, women are lagging behind men in mastering online skills, with Coursera data showing unequal representation in AI and big data (30%), programming (31%), and network and cybersecurity (31%).
The WEF report states: “These findings highlight the need for targeted interventions to close this gap and ensure equitable access to emerging technological capabilities, particularly as generative AI is a burgeoning technology with the potential to enable customized learning experiences that meet the needs of diverse learner populations.”
The global gender gap score for 2024 for all 146 countries included in the WEF report is 68.5%.
Compared to the continuing sample of 143 countries included in last year’s edition, the global gender gap has further narrowed by +0.1 percentage points, from 68.5% to 68.6%. Considering the 101 countries consistently surveyed from 2006 to 2024, the gap also improves by +0.1 percentage points, reaching 68.6%.
“Without meaningful and widespread changes since the last edition, the rate of progress towards achieving gender equality has effectively slowed. Based on current data, it will take 134 years to achieve full gender equality – roughly five generations beyond the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target.”
Key findings from the WEF:
According to the 2024 Global Gender Gap Index, while no country has achieved full gender parity, 97% of economies included in the index have closed at least 60% of their gender gaps, a significant improvement from 85% in 2006. Iceland (93.5%) once again ranked first, having topped the index for the 15th year in a row, and remains the only economy to have closed more than 90% of its gender gap. European economies occupy seven of the top ten positions globally. In addition to Iceland, these include Finland (87.5%), Norway (87.5%), Sweden (81.6%), Germany (81%), Ireland (80.2%) and Spain (79.7%). The remaining three positions are filled by New Zealand (4th, 83.5%), Nicaragua (6th, 81.1%) and Namibia (8th, 80.5%). The gender gap in health and survival has narrowed by 96 percent, the gap in educational attainment by 94.9 percent, the gap in economic participation and opportunity by 60.5 percent, and the gap in political empowerment by 22.5 percent. Gender parity in political empowerment has increased by a total of 8.3 percentage points over the past 18 times, reaching 22.8%. Gender parity in economic participation and opportunity and educational attainment has increased by 4.8 and 4.2 percentage points, respectively. Health and survival is the only sub-index that has declined slowly since 2006 (-0.2 percentage points).The pace of evolution of each sub-index impacts its respective timeline for achieving gender parity, with this year’s results lengthening the waiting period for gender parity in educational attainment to 20 years (+4 years from 2023) and gender parity in political empowerment to 169 years (+7 years from 2023), while the timeline for economic participation and opportunity has accelerated to 152 years (-17 years from 2023). The timeline for closing the gender gap in health and survival remains undetermined.
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