Robots are a bigger threat to women than men in the workplace
Southfield — Women are more likely than men to be knocked out of their US jobs by automation in the next eight years, and they will find half as many opportunities to land new positions unless there’s a new effort to retrain them. Those conclusions, from a study released Monday at the World Economic Forum, show about 57% of the 1.4-million US jobs to be disrupted by technology between now and 2026 are held by women. With proper retraining, most of the workers would find new, higher-paying jobs. Without it, very few have opportunities, but women fare the worst, according to the study, conducted in collaboration with the Boston Consulting Group. Making the transition will be expensive and difficult, the authors said. "It is definitely unprecedented, the effort that would be required on the part of policy makers," said Saadia Zahidi, one of the authors and head of education, gender and work for the World Economic Forum (WEF), which is holding its annual forum this week in Davos, Switze...
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