Women needed in STEM, before the revolution

We can’t afford to let female workers get left out, Denea Bascombe writes.

Women are underwhelmingly employed in the socalled STEM fields — science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Not only women themselves, but governments and industries would benefit to realize the value of having more women in these fields. The European Commission says that more women in information and communications technology, a STEM sub-field known by the abbreviation ICT, could increase the European Union’s GDP by nine billion euros per year.

This low-risk, high-reward opportunity is being missed around the globe, with a particular negligence at home. Canada, for its genderbalanced cabinet, only sees 36 per cent of PhDs in science earned by women, while the U.K. and U.S. see 49 and 46 per cent, respectively. Canada’s science minister thinks that Canadian universities aren’t doing enough to ensure gender parity.

Female participation in STEM, and especially within ICT, is of particular importance today as the world faces the fourth industrial revolution, an extension of the digital revolution that will see heightened usage of artificial intelligence to find solutions to business and societal problems through automation. Traditionally, areas known to pose opportunities for secure and lucrative careers are STEM-related, and this will only become more true as artificial intelligence continues to find its way into the global market. Women need to pursue STEM to have a chance in artificial intelligence. Careers in this area may skyrocket at the same time administrative and repetitive jobs, many of which are traditionally held by women, are at a higher risk of being automated.

Because employment loss due to artificial intelligence will disproportionately affect women, who are less likely to hold the most secure jobs, it is important to be proactive in encouraging women to take up a greater space in STEM- and particularly ICTrelated careers. The World Economic Forum reports only 16 per cent of companies in the ICT industry perceive attracting female talent as a key future workforce strategy, while more than half view the biggest barrier to leveraging female talent as the lack of qualified incoming talent.

Whether or not women are choosing programs in ICT today, women were some of the first pioneers in the field. Thus female participation in the study and practice of ICT is likely less of quality, and more of inclusivity and opportunity. Women only maintain a small share of the industry, with a 25 per cent wage gap, and make up just five per cent of the sector’s CEOs. Though the overall employment outlook is stable for women across the ICT industry, the relative ease of recruiting women is ranked as harder, and estimated to continue to be harder in 2020 by the World Economic Forum. Making it easier is a job for all of us.

Solutions have been proposed for decades. We know learning materials need to be inclusive and depart from gender roles. Female role models in STEM are needed. Equal and hands-on learning opportunities should be available, and employment policy needs to reflect the disadvantage women face in entering the fields. There is likely little need to propose new solutions, given that existing suggestions may not be fully implemented.

What is needed is a sense of urgency to make meaningful steps toward increasing women in STEM, with a fortified focus on ICT. Perhaps what will create a sense of urgency is the potential for artificial intelligence to impact the workforce in ways that cannot be anticipated or halted. As such, it is imperative that society, through all sectors and industries, prepares for outcomes of automation that can be easily anticipated — one of which is increasing gender inequality in the workforce.

This gives rise to serious inequality concerns and an increasing gender gap due to exclusion of lower-skilled workers from the changing labour force, leading to further marginalization of these groups. In regards to women in the ICT industry, who exist in the highest proportion in lower-level jobs and the lowest proportion in higher-level jobs, their place in the field is precarious at best. The implications of this are widespread. In a world where artificial intelligence is the future, women may be excluded from what may well be the most secure industry in the economy even as many jobs typically held by women are augmented or overtaken by automation. The impacts not only on women, but entire economies, may be devastating.