Vulnerable employment trends for women

🤖 The Gendered Impact of AI: Why Women—Especially from Marginalised Backgrounds—Are Most at Risk As artificial intelligence continues to reshape the world of work, one thing is becoming increasingly clear: the effects will not be felt equally. A new report from the United Nations’s International Labour Organization and Poland’s NASK reveals that roles traditionally held by women—particularly in high-income countries—are almost three times more likely to be disrupted by generative AI than those held by men. 📉 9.6% of female-held jobs are at high risk of transformation, compared to just 3.5% of male-held roles. Why? Many of these jobs are in administration and clerical work—sectors where AI can automate routine tasks efficiently. But while AI may not eliminate these roles outright, it is radically reshaping them, threatening job security and career progression for many women. This risk is not theoretical. Back in 2023, researchers at OpenAI—the company behind ChatGPT—examined the potential exposure of different occupations to large language models like GPT-4. The results were striking: around 80% of the US workforce could have at least 10% of their work tasks impacted by generative AI. While they were careful not to label this a prediction, the message was clear: AI's reach is widespread and accelerating. 🌍 An intersectional lens shows even deeper inequities. Women from marginalised communities—especially women of colour, older women, and those with lower levels of formal education—face heightened vulnerability: They are overrepresented in lower-paid, more automatable roles, with limited access to training or advancement. They often lack the tools, networks, and opportunities to adapt to digital shifts. And they face greater risks of bias within the AI systems themselves, which can reinforce inequality in recruitment and promotion. Meanwhile, roles being augmented by AI—like those in tech, media, and finance—are still largely male-dominated, widening the gender and racial divide in the AI economy. According to the World Economic Forum, 33.7% of women are in jobs being disrupted by AI, compared to just 25.5% of men. 📢 As AI moves from buzzword to business reality, we need more than technical solutions—we need intentional, inclusive strategies. That means designing AI systems that reflect the full diversity of society, investing in upskilling programmes that reach everyone, and ensuring the benefits of AI are distributed fairly. The question on my mind is - if AI is shaping the future of work, who’s shaping AI? #AI #FutureOfWork #EquityInTech #GenderEquality #Intersectionality #Inclusion #ResponsibleTech

Happy to share the publication of my paper "Vulnerable Sites: Bottom-of-the Pyramid Blue-Collar Workers, Occupational Gendering and Earnings Disparity" in The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer. India is the world’s largest blue-collar recruiting market, yet this economy stays invisible and under-explored. This research examined the earnings opportunity of the bottom-of-the pyramid blue-collar worker, namely those who have not even cleared class X. The study analysed job postings across 13 Indian cities within 17 job profiles, on a popular blue-collar job portal and found significant disparity in earnings based on gender, job profile, and job location. Two-step clustering model revealed occupational gendering such that women will be kept out of certain jobs, and there was significant evidence of a masculinised skill perception within a significant proportion of the job postings. The image of the blue-collar worker is dominantly that of a male worker. The study found that high paying job postings such as delivery person and cook were associated significantly with a male requirement, while low-paying jobs ranging from housekeeping (including house maids) to receptionist formed the bulk of demand for women workers. Occupational segregation and cultural discrimination may be creating a structural bias against blue-collar women locking them in a constrained life position. However, men’s vulnerability was also observed in the data as the high paying delivery profile along with office boy/peon had lowest salary much lower than minimum wage. Online job-portals can offer an alternative research site to understand the challenges and precarious status of blue-collar workers, thereby addressing the data paucity issue. Excavating insights from such natural experiments can form a basis for developing appropriate educational, training and bargaining solutions for them. #indianeconomy #bluecollar #occupational gendering #vulnerability #labour wages Khan, F., Surisetti, S. Vulnerable Sites: Bottom-of-the Pyramid Blue-Collar Workers, Occupational Gendering and Earnings Disparity. Ind. J. Labour Econ. (2023). https://lnkd.in/dMSQ6qFj

The Great She-cession: A Global Reality 🚺A recent McKinsey & Lean In 2025 report reveals that women even in senior positions in the US are leaving the workforce at nearly twice the rate of men. ◽️Not because of capability or ambition but : ▫️Motherhood penalty that stalls their career. ▫️Racial inequities ▫️Lack of flexibility with return to office mandates, ▫️Weak child care infrastructure support ▫️Burnout and stress ▫️Workplace bias and discrimination ▫️ Unpaid care giving responsibilities at home ▫️Safety concerns 🚺This isn’t just an American story, but globally these trends are also mirrored with ILO reporting women’s participation is 47% vs 72% for men. A 25% gap/ ▫️Remote work helped but also blurred boundaries and made them in fact shoulder double shift burden ▫️708 million women are excluded from the labour work force because of unpaid caregiving. ▫️The UN warns closing the gender gap in workforce participation could take over 130 years. 🚺India too reflects similar root cause reasona often magnified by cultural and infrastructural gaps. ▫️The female labor force participation rate (FLFP) stands at 37% in 2025, up from 23% in 2017 (CMIE data), yet millions are still dropping out after marriage, childbirth. ▫️Informal sector reliance obscures real labour contribution with no maternity or childcare support and fragile job security ▫️Nearly 50% of Indian women quit mid-career, mainly due to caregiving burdens and unsafe work environments. ▫️Urban educated women face a “broken rung” with very few reach leadership positions (just 17% of senior managers are women). 🚺This is then not just a women’s issue but an economic and societal crisis. ▫️When women leave, businesses lose talent, innovation, and diverse leadership. ▫️Economies shrink—India alone could add $770 billion to GDP by 2025 with gender parity in the workforce (McKinsey) 🚺Remedy: ✔️Policy shifts: Paid parental leave for both parents, elder care,childcare subsidies, ✔️Re-entry programs for women reentering work force after maternity breaks. ✔️Flexible work, hybrid models, and mentorship pipelines . ✔️Prioritise burnout prevention and mental health ✔️Stop seeing women as “secondary earners” to recognizing them as growth drivers. ✔️ Diversity targets tied to leadership KPIs, not just CSR reports. 🚺Because when women leave the workplace, it’s not just a gender issue it’s a growth issue. ✔️When women rise, workplaces thrive. ❌And when women leave, everyone loses. 28/8/25 240/365 #genderequality #workplace #diversityandinclusion #linkedinlife #linkedin

Low female labor force participation is not cultural. It’s structural. Female LFPR in Sub-Saharan Africa has hovered around 47% for two decades, even as women’s tertiary education rose by 40% (ILO, 2023). If education alone drove participation, the rate should have risen. It hasn’t, because education isn’t the binding constraint. Market structure is. Four mechanisms explain the gap: Care burden — Women spend roughly three times more on unpaid care work than men globally (OECD). Countries with public childcare systems consistently have higher female LFPR; the gap between high- and low-support countries exceeds 20 percentage points. Informality — Around 85% of employed women in SSA are in vulnerable employment, own-account or family work (ILO). No contracts, no benefits, no wage progression. This isn’t flexibility; it’s constrained choice. Job segmentation — Women are concentrated in low-productivity sectors. In Nigeria, 60% of women work in agriculture, versus 35% of men sectors weakly linked to formal labor markets and wage growth. Weak demand for skilled labor — When formal job creation accounts for only a small fraction of employment growth, adding skills alone cannot increase participation. Demand, not supply, is often the binding constraint. The implication we need to know is that Training programs alone rarely move LFPR. When care work is uncompensated, formal jobs are scarce, and women are concentrated in low-productivity sectors, skills cannot translate into participation. Systematic reviews show that bundled approaches, combining skills development with childcare support, job placement assistance, and demand-side incentives, consistently outperform standalone training. Yet most programs remain supply-focused. When constraints bind, motivation becomes irrelevant. The real question for policymakers isn’t “How do we motivate women?” It’s “Which market failures are we actually addressing?”

UN Women has reported that more than 10% of women worldwide are living in a cycle of extreme poverty (living on less than 2.15USD per day. And at the current rate of progress, 8% of women will still be trapped in this cycle of extreme poverty by 2030. Only 61%of women of prime working age are employed, compared to 90.6 percent of men. Additionally, almost 60 percent of women globally are part of the informal economy, a number that exceeds 90 percent in low-income nations. Many of these women work in precarious, low-wage, and unskilled positions without social safety nets, occupying roles such as domestic workers, construction laborers, or seasonal agricultural workers. Investing in skilled and decent jobs for women creates a ripple effect, benefiting society as a whole by promoting gender equality and driving sustainable economic development. This report from UN Women outlines some of the great initiatives that are in place and transforming this reality for women worldwide. - The Skill Impact Bond is a $14.4 million initiative in India aimed at enhancing women's access to decent employment. The programme certified has almost 10,000 people, of which over 70% are women—have reported a 56% job placement rate and 42 per cent retention rate over just three months, outperforming many other national initiatives. - In Germany, the Initiative for Global Solidarity has helped 300,000 workers, with 60% being women, get better ways to report and resolve issues like discrimination and violence at work. Plus, more than 1,500 workers have been trained to assist with these efforts. - Kazakhstan last year increased the paid childcare period for working and non-working motheres from 1 to 1.5 years while also increasing social benefits for people with disabilities by 14.5%, helping more than 700,000 parents in 2023. It's heartening to see initiatives like this making a big difference. #GenderEquity #GenderGap #UNWomen https://lnkd.in/eSEEu38R

Unpaid but working: The paradox of women's employment in India Self-employment is a key driver of India’s economic growth but there is still a lot that needs to change before we can truly empower women through these measures. The latest Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) 2023-24 shows worrisome trends: One in three working women in India is "self-employed" as a helper in household enterprises, working without a salary or wage. For men, this share is just one in ten. 67.4% of working women fall within the self-employed category, compared to 53.6% of men. But for many this does not translate into financial independence. In this way, the data reveals deep-rooted gender disparity in economic recognition and financial security. #SelfEmployment #GenderGap #UnpaidLabour #WomenAtWork #PLFS #DataDriven #EmploymentPolicy

#Bangladesh: new analysis reveals the dire state of women in the labour market. Towfiqul Islam Khan, senior research fellow at the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) told a seminar that women's participation in the labour market is only 19%, not 41% as previously reported. Similarly, women's unemployment is not 3.6%, but 9.7%. Some 2.1 million workers lost their jobs in the first six months of FY25, 86% of them women. 80% of employed women are in vulnerable jobs and only 3% receive employer supported retirement benefits. Over 60% of young women are classified as NEET -- neither in employment, education, or training. Debapriya Bhattacharya, co-founder of the CPD and convenor of the Citizen's Platform for SDGs, stressed the need for Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB) to boost spending on women's employment, skills, and health and safety. Rubana Huq Adiba Afros Dorothee Baumann-Pauly Justine Nolan Michael Posner