Automation will affect women the most in the Indian job market: Report

• The rise in automation will likely lead to job losses in India with the women workforce taking a big hit.
  
• According to the Mckinsey Global Institute, over 11 million women will need job transitions as automated systems take over most tasks.
  
• Automation is expected to hit the clerical and administrative positions the most among women, highlighted the report.

The rise of artificial intelligence is changing the job market in a big way all over the world. But in Indian women face a bigger risk compared to men in the automation industry.

According to the latest research titled “The future of women at work: Transitions in the age of automation” by McKinsey Global Institute, automation may cost India a major transition in jobs over the next 10 years.

The report highlighted that nearly 11 million Indian women in the workforce will need to change their jobs by 2030, thanks to automated system carrying out majority tasks at workplace.

This is nearly 8% of the total women employed across the globe. Globally, this may impact nearly 160 million female working professionals.

The job losses will majorly impact the clerical and in-service jobs including administrative positions, accounting for over half of the job loss among women. While the manufacturing industry will be the most prone to job loss among men.

For instance, nearly 40% of the total elementary school tasks, performed by the teachers can be potentially automated to ease the workflow.

Low-paid occupations including labour workforce accounts for a large proportion of India’s female working population, with agriculture producing nearly 60% jobs.

However, this will also lead to creation of new jobs. India is expected to generate nearly 23 million new jobs for working-age women, compared to 91 million among men, the report suggested. Given that, the automated systems will eventually lead to a rise in demand for workforce skilled in artificial intelligence and machine learning tools.

“Women start with lower representation in the workplace and in most economies there is a strong genderization of work or more concentration of women in certain occupations than others,” Anu Madgavkar, partner with Mckinsey Global Institute reportedly said.

Within the IT space, skills that are needed include “AI, machine learning, blockchain, cloud computing, data visualization, data engineering, IOT, data science and analytics, and extended Reality (virtual reality and augmented reality),” said Bhajneet Dhingra, independent talent advisor for IT majors and startups.

According to him, globally women contribute only between 10-12% in AI and machine learning, leaving a lot of room to make an impact.

The McKinsey research studied the fastest growing economies including India, Japan, Germany and the US among others.

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