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Abstract: Predicting the gender effects of the next phase of technological change is complex. Potential mass job displacement, as predicted by some of the most quoted analysts, could be expected to put gender equality gains at risk, with women again encouraged to focus more on unpaid work, as happened after the two world wars when mass unemployment was threatened. Predictions of job loss by gender are based on extrapolating from the current pattern of gender segregation. This may be a reasonable method to predict job loss, provided attention is paid to the fact that not all women's jobs are routinized and automatable and that women's low wages may reduce incentives to displace female labor.
However, changes in gender relations may not only rule out a return to domestic work in the face of job shortage but may also be shaping access to newly created jobs in ways that are not easily predictable. It is women who have taken the majority of new higher skilled jobs over recent years in the OECD and that trend could continue. There are still reasons to be concerned about the impact of new technologies on gender equality. Some of the important props that have supported women's careers, such as maternity leave, may come under threat with a trend toward less stable employment relationships and gig-economy working. Job shortage may intensify competition for jobs and thereby require those that secure a post to work longer hours, even if job shortages and rising productivity should prompt policy interventions to support job sharing and shorter working weeks. Perhaps the only upside of the predicted disruption to labor markets materializes is that it should provide an opportunity to rethink how work and labor markets are organized and enable a move toward more gender-equal sharing of wage work and unpaid care work, accommodated by an overdue trend toward shorter, not longer, full-time hours and more rights to combine care and work. Whether or not that opportunity will be taken depends on political will and not on the technology itself.
Predictions about the future of work abound. A Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) is said to be a process that will result in major job displacement. The most well-cited predictions tend to be the gloomiest, such...