As workers grapple with anxiety around artificial intelligence replacing them, women in the workplace may have extra reason to fear. Jobs traditionally held by women are much more exposed to AI than those traditionally held by men, according to new data from the United Nations’ International Labour Organization (ILO) and Poland’s National Research Institute (NASK).
The ILO-NASK report isn’t meant to say that AI will eliminate clerical or entry-level jobs. Rather, these jobs still require human involvement in some capacity, and identifying jobs that AI can partially complete can help prepare the workforce in those industries for technological changes.
“This index helps identify where GenAI is likely to have the biggest impact, so countries can better prepare and protect workers,” Marek Troszyński, senior expert at NASK, said in the report.
Rembrand Koning, associate professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, believes one key to women future-proofing workplace roles that may be more exposed to AI is to follow the framework of viewing AI as a tool, not a threat.
“This goes back to the distinction between automation versus augmentation when we think about AI,” Koning told Fortune. “We can think of this as a threat, which is that it’s going to automate away a lot of these clerical jobs that might be held more by women. On the other hand, we can think of AI as automating a lot of this work, of allowing [workers] to take on tasks that might be higher paying, or that there might be more competition.”
“Men seem to be much more confident—shall I say, overconfident—that, if they use AI, they’ll still get all the benefits,” Koning said.
The onus of changing who feels comfortable accessing AI falls not on the women workers, but on leaders in the workplace, Koning said. In many workplaces, workers, usually men, experiment with AI tools in the shadows. Even if an office doesn’t have a license for or partnership with an AI company, its management should still set clear expectations and resources on how to use the technology, Koning suggested.
“If we want to make sure it’s inclusive, it includes all workers, it’s the job of a leader to bring everybody in,” he said.
