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Artificial intelligence is coming for your job – and according to a new report, it’s coming faster if you’re a woman.
For technology designed to eliminate benign work, artificial intelligence is proving remarkably efficient at replicating workplace inequality. Not that it will surprise any woman under the sun, but a new report from the UN’s International Labour Organisation has confirmed women are set to bear the brunt of AI-driven job disruption. You mean to say gender disparity is rearing its ugly head in yet another area of everyday life?
Around 9.6% of traditionally female roles are projected to be ‘transformed’ (ominous) by AI, compared with just 3.5% of male-dominated jobs. Considering women are more likely to inhabit lower-paid and undervalued roles, this is hardly revolutionary.
In higher-income countries, where tech adoption moves faster and clerical work is still largely feminised, the gap is even starker: 41% of women’s jobs are at risk, compared to 28% of men’s. But this tells us less about AI itself and more about the scaffolding of the modern labour market. If you’re job already lacked structural power, AI is simply removing the pretence.
63% of executives surveyed in a recent New York Times article said they expect AI to take over ‘mundane’ tasks from entry-level workers. While this might seem like the most preferable outcome for those at the top, tasks once considered tedious rites of passage are also vital training grounds. They offer early-career employees a foothold in competitive industries, particularly women, who are statistically more likely to enter lower-wage or support roles. If those footholds disappear, the ladder starts even higher off the ground.
It’s little surprise, then, that Gen Z is more pessimistic about their career prospects than any other age group. The entry-level job is quietly becoming an endangered species. Many junior roles are asking for years-worth of experience, and when you throw in a growing reliance on AI-generated resumes and a job market increasingly indifferent to human insight, it’s no wonder that lying on applications is becoming the new normal.
