|
In the region, care sector (education, health, social assistance and domestic employment) is the largest source of employment for women. It accumulates 27.7% of occupied women. This is explained as an extension of the role assigned to them as caregivers to the labour markets. While the probability of automating some activities related to care is low, given its relational nature, arbitrary inequalities persist towards female workers, that demonstrate the persistence of patriarchal cultural patterns in the region, regarding wage gaps, precarious working conditions, limited access to decision-making positions and other discriminations. Population ageing provides grounds for anticipating greater demand for care services, creating an opportunity to employ more women. However, it is essential to recognize the importance of care work as a social foundation of life and to improve the conditions of those who provide care, paid and unpaid. It is also predicted that a part of the population in charge of care will have to start interacting with new technologies mainly associated with smart devices for home and health.
According to the specialized literature, trade and manufacturing sectors have a high probability of automating activities and thus more intensely replacing jobs in these areas. These two sectors jointly represent 33.5% of employed women.
The development of electronic commerce will generate deep restructuring of jobs. Research has concluded that the trade sector has occupations with high risk of automation, such as as cashiers and the areas of telesales and telephony services, which concentrate a high proportion of women in the countries of the region.
The manufacturing sector concentrates on average 11.6% of employed women and 53% of them are employed in occupations classified as officers, workers and artisans of mechanical arts and other crafts, in large part through maquilas, systems that are especially common in countries such as El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Nicaragua. Those occupations, in addition to historically precarious working conditions, have high concentration of routine tasks that do not require high qualifications and therefore are at high risk of replacement by robots.
Given the current characteristics of the labour market and the cultural patterns that still consider women responsible for unpaid domestic and care work, it is worth asking whether new business models based on digital platforms will allow more flexible forms of work and will serve to improve the women’s participation in the labor market, or if they will generate more precarious working conditions, overloading women’s working time and reducing their linkages with social protection systems.
In a context of accelerated technological changes, the widening or closing of gender gaps in the labour market will depend on policy actions to address the structural challenges of inequality in a comprehensive way and thus ensure decent jobs for men and women.
|
