A study by the innovation enterprise company, Challenge Works, found that women on low incomes face key challenges when trying to access work opportunities in a changing job market. For instance, roles emerging in new “future-focused” industries such as e-health, renewable energy and green finance.
The report, entitled “Pathways to Progress”, points out that women are already currently underrepresented in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) industries and overrepresented in low-paying sectors, such as cleaning, retail, hospitality, and care.
The problem is that STEM sectors are likely to expand in the future, whereas the cleaning and caring industries have been identified as at risk of automation. Indeed, according to an analysis in 2019 by the Office for National Statistics, just over 70 per cent of the roles at risk of automation are currently done by women.
The report found that women on low incomes are particularly likely to face various pressures and constraints that make it much more difficult for them to take risks and make long-term, strategic career decisions. Not only that, but the authors found that “future-focused” industries and occupations were unfamiliar to women on low incomes, with the result that finding and transitioning into many future-focused industries and occupations was perceived by them as high risk.
To facilitate the transition of low-income women into careers in these new sectors, the report says that employers will need to adjust qualification requirements and job design to become more flexible, accommodate on-the-job learning, and tailor their recruitment strategies to actively target a more diverse pool of applicants.
Whilst acknowledging some of the current commercial restraints and funding environments that might inhibit the abilities of employers and service providers to accommodate and incentivise participation, the authors recommend that stakeholders should:
- Use human-centred design to deliver interventions tailored to the needs of women on low incomes.
- Account for caring responsibilities and the barriers that these pose to women on low incomes when designing programmes, services and employment practices.
- Improve impact measurement approaches to better account for the needs and circumstances of women on low incomes.
- Improve equality, diversity and inclusion strategies (including employment practices and recruitment strategies) to enable women on low incomes to access and progress within future-focused work.
- Create new tools, approaches and collaboration models that facilitate learning and career coaching at scale.
You can read the report in full here.