WASHINGTON, D.C. – A new report examining the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) systems on women’s work opportunities globally, including Latin America and the Caribbean, has found that AI systems can have a gendered effect on labor, care, and domestic employment.
Photo via kentoh/iStockThe report by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and UNESCO also found that AI can promote stereotypes about women that impact opportunities to reskill and upskill as well as pathways to STEM-related careers.
The report warns that governments, the private sector, and other actors must make efforts to ensure women are not left behind in the digital economy and analyses measures to make it possible. It also encourages organizations, citizens, policymakers, and academics to face this challenge of the future of work.
The report is authored by researchers from the IDB, the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy at the University of Cambridge and Oxford, UNESCO, and the OECD.
Among the key considerations of the report is that contextual and geographical complexities must be systematically addressed when designing and implementing AI systems.
“Diverse labor markets, economies, cultures, and gender norms shape how workers experience AI systems in practice, meaning that AI-based tools and technologies will impact women’s work in these settings.”
The report urged that women must not be left behind in the digital economy and reveals the “troubling gaps in women’s access to digital skills and jobs, and how governments, companies, and societies must work to close these gaps”.
The UNESCO EQUALS Skills Coalition (2019) estimated that, on average, around the globe, women are 25 percent less likely than men to know how to use information and communications technology (CT) for basic purposes, such as using simple arithmetic formulas on a spreadsheet. Meanwhile, men are four times likelier than women to have advanced skills such as computer programming.
The report finds that some AI systems might offer employees unequal models of flexible work. This reinforces the notion of women as primary caregivers, considering they spend more than twice as much time as men on domestic and care work.
AI systems and workplaces must not fuel gender inequality. The report shows the powerful connection between stereotypes of women’s paid and unpaid work, and how these stereotypes are further shaped and encoded into technological systems.
“Through this joint report, the IDB fosters digital transformation in the region in line with Vision 2025 – the Bank’s blueprint for stimulating recovery and reigniting economic growth in Latin America and the Caribbean. The initiative helps accelerate a fair and inclusive transition towards a more digital, resilient, inclusive, and quality labor system for women,” the IDB said in a statement.
