According to the chairman and chief executive of ManpowerGroup, women would be able to gain a chance to "leapfrog" their male counterparts and correct workplace gender imbalances by developments in technology.
Jonas Prising said in a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos that women would be able to develop new skills and build on their typically higher education levels and improve efficiencies, facilitate learning and increase flexibility in the way we work with the help of technology.
With research predicting that the job roles most likely to be displaced by automation in the future will be those typically assumed by women, his comments come amid wider concerns over the impact of technology on the future of the workforce.
"There is nothing predestined in how technology is going to be applied," Prising said.
"If you believe that lifelong learning and learnability is going to be a key driver of your employability, women have a great opportunity to leapfrog based on their educational background and reset their competitive contribution," he said.
And as CEOs seek to adapt to new levels of automation in the "Fourth Industrial Revolution" and the resultant polarization of the workforce and society, educating employees will be one of the fundamental tasks of CEOs according to Prising.
"We believe that the polarization of the population is, to a large degree, caused by the polarization of the workforce, between the haves and have-nots in terms of skills. Those that can participate, or knowledge workers, can participate and prosper; those that can't, or feel that they won't, are already reacting.”
"Clearly hard and soft skills are going to be very important, but over time we think that speed of change is accelerating and a key determinate of your employability is going to be your likelihood to acquire new skills."
As such, to help indicate the ability of an employee to develop new skills, ManpowerGroup is currently establishing the 'LQ' – the learnability quotient.
Nevertheless, the "clear need" for a greater drive towards gender balance across industries, particularly science and technology was highlighted by Ulrich Spiesshofer, chief executive of technology company ABB.
With just two percent being women, fewer than five percent of college graduates are engineering majors in the U.S.
For Spiesshofer, to address that gap and mitigate the potential negative impacts of gender imbalance going forward, tthe impetus is on employers, government and educational institutions as a whole.
By removing unintentional bias in the hiring process, it is here that technology could in fact advantage women, said Mark Weinberger, chief executive of EY.
"In some ways, robotics can remove that unintentional bias by objectively looking at criteria, and so I think there's optimism there."
He added: "We cannot be successful in creating jobs if 50 percent of the workforce is left out."
(Source:www.cnbc.com)
Jonas Prising said in a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos that women would be able to develop new skills and build on their typically higher education levels and improve efficiencies, facilitate learning and increase flexibility in the way we work with the help of technology.
With research predicting that the job roles most likely to be displaced by automation in the future will be those typically assumed by women, his comments come amid wider concerns over the impact of technology on the future of the workforce.
"There is nothing predestined in how technology is going to be applied," Prising said.
"If you believe that lifelong learning and learnability is going to be a key driver of your employability, women have a great opportunity to leapfrog based on their educational background and reset their competitive contribution," he said.
And as CEOs seek to adapt to new levels of automation in the "Fourth Industrial Revolution" and the resultant polarization of the workforce and society, educating employees will be one of the fundamental tasks of CEOs according to Prising.
"We believe that the polarization of the population is, to a large degree, caused by the polarization of the workforce, between the haves and have-nots in terms of skills. Those that can participate, or knowledge workers, can participate and prosper; those that can't, or feel that they won't, are already reacting.”
"Clearly hard and soft skills are going to be very important, but over time we think that speed of change is accelerating and a key determinate of your employability is going to be your likelihood to acquire new skills."
As such, to help indicate the ability of an employee to develop new skills, ManpowerGroup is currently establishing the 'LQ' – the learnability quotient.
Nevertheless, the "clear need" for a greater drive towards gender balance across industries, particularly science and technology was highlighted by Ulrich Spiesshofer, chief executive of technology company ABB.
With just two percent being women, fewer than five percent of college graduates are engineering majors in the U.S.
For Spiesshofer, to address that gap and mitigate the potential negative impacts of gender imbalance going forward, tthe impetus is on employers, government and educational institutions as a whole.
By removing unintentional bias in the hiring process, it is here that technology could in fact advantage women, said Mark Weinberger, chief executive of EY.
"In some ways, robotics can remove that unintentional bias by objectively looking at criteria, and so I think there's optimism there."
He added: "We cannot be successful in creating jobs if 50 percent of the workforce is left out."
(Source:www.cnbc.com)
