Women in tech can get gender equality back on track

COVID-19 has impacted efforts to address gender equality. Around the world, women have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic compared to men, both at work and home. Automation is adding to this challenge, with up to one in four workers having to transition to new jobs over the coming decade. With the tech sector facing a huge skills gap, getting more women into skilled tech jobs can help bridge this gap and get gender equality back on track. But several obstacles remain.

Even before Covid-19, global progress in tackling gender gaps in work had been marginal. While Singapore fares relatively well in overall labour distribution - women compose 46 per cent of our workforce - a 2019 McKinsey study showed that they constitute just 19 per cent of the executive teams of the companies we examined. A quarter of the companies looked at in Singapore had no women on their executive teams at all.

As a result of the pandemic, women's jobs have been nearly twice as vulnerable compared to men's - while women make up 39 per cent of global employment, they accounted for 54 per cent of overall job losses as at May 2020.