Opportunities for women at innovative automation ensure equal pay for equal work will be needed

Industrial jobs are great career opportunities for women at innovative automation because they are quite abundant and they pay better than other more traditional career choices. So why don’t women consider these careers? We don’t know either! And try to learn more about what kinds of opportunities for women and men in industrial and manufacturing automation at Innovative Automation.

What is Industrial Automation? 

Industrial (or manufacturing) automation is the use of control systems (such as robots) for operating machinery and factory processes, that would otherwise require human intervention. This is especially useful for dangerous jobs or jobs that require exposure to hazards or hazardous materials. There are a huge number of opportunities for people in this growing field, and these jobs are highly-specialized and offer many benefits to those choosing a career path.

Why Don’t Women Go Into Skilled Trades Careers?

A common misconception is that skilled trades jobs aren’t appealing for women because they are dirty, dangerous, or require physical strength that women don’t possess. This simply isn’t true. Today jobs in industrial automation are often performed in high-tech facilities that are safe, clean, and collaborative.

Another potential reason is that thanks to the media, opportunities for women at innovative automation, which they can’t envision themselves in or in non-traditional roles. They just don’t see it around them. This is why women typically follow established career paths such as nursing and office administrative and managerial positions. 

Thanks to a skilled labor shortage in Canada, the Canadian Government is taking steps to nurture interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and to incentivize women to venture into skilled trades such as industrial automation. Some programs offer financial assistance to women entering the trades.

We’re seeing evidence that this is changing the way women look at their careers, but we still have a long way to go.

A career in Automation, robotics:

As the winds of change are blowing across the industry as they move to automation and newer technologies, companies are gradually picking up on involving automation at their production units across India. This is minimizing human intervention in production, else conventional technologies generally require more manpower. Opportunities for women at innovative automation who are also likely to be impacted by the in sectors like Information Technology (IT). 

Similarly, services like retail, hospitality are also expected for dramatic transformations as a result of digitalization, automation, and a surge in the use of data analytics. Women who are looking for an advanced career must look for upgrading to upcoming technologies in their relevant areas of work. This will help in widening their job opportunities.

Highly educated women often enter new jobs that are difficult to automate:

While women face a somewhat higher risk of automation based on current employment patterns, there are signs that the structure of women’s employment is changing, with high-skilled work increasingly prevalent.

Women’s educational attainment has grown rapidly and many education gender gaps that existed in the past have already been eliminated, as can be seen from the Gender Equality Index scores in the domain of knowledge. Opportunities for women at innovative automation have begun to take most of the new high-skilled jobs that are unlikely to be automated shortly: around 8 million of the 12 million high-skilled jobs created between 2003 and 2015 in the EU went to women.

This led to upgrading in the female occupational structure, with the share of women in high skilled occupations increasing. This does not, however, mean that women are paid equally to men in these jobs.

The potential of automation to challenge existing gender inequalities remains unclear:

Given the uncertain nature of changes in technology and gender relations, it is difficult to go beyond stylized lists of factors likely to influence the gender equality outcomes of automation in the future. The current literature mostly limits itself to speculating about how this process could affect gender equality, namely gender segregation, division of unpaid work, pay gaps, and working conditions.

All of these speculative scenarios have something in common: the changes have the potential to improve gender equality but their outcomes are highly uncertain and there is no guarantee that their promise will be fulfilled. Indeed, the research reviewed suggests that this is unlikely to happen without (1) gender-sensitive regulation, institutions, and policies; (2) challenges to established gender stereotypes, such as those relating to ICT and STEM participation and caring activities; and (3) greater representation of women in key decision-making positions.