[slideshare id=60707004&doc=bn-digtransformation-oppsforwomen-160410025407]
Last week I delivered a talk to the WA public sector forum for women on the topic of whether digital disruption is delivering opportunities or threats to women in the workplace.
The news is that it’s a mixed bag.
You can view my slides here, (or if the embedding has worked on your device, view them above and click through them.)
Here’s the summary:
- I’ve been living and breathing digital disruption since 1999, with my own startup, then reiwa.com and now at Business News
- Great things happen slowly – the overnight fad fades quickly – the changes wrought by digital disruption seem to happen fast, but have probably been building for years. Either get on board and change, or be changed
- At Business News, our digital advertising has tripled in 3 years; our web traffic has never been higher, despite being behind a pay wall; our subscription renewal rates have never been higher
- Disruption can happen to anyone, anytime, anywhere
- 25% of WA GDP under attack over the next decade, from digital businesses like LinkedIN, Uber, AirBnB & Facebook … and who knows who else?
- Are we getting behind our own tech startups in WA and Australia?
- The “always on” worker is feeling under attack; never switching off; what kind of parenting is going on? How are we handling stress?
- Disruption offers new opportunities (to shave costs, gather new revenue) and challenges
- 61% women are in the workforce (men 77%) yet men earn 18% more (in WA, it’s 25% more)
- 12% of Board appointments are women, only 3% of CEOs are women … yet women make up 50.8% of population (the majority!)
- This underutilisation of a key asset is estimated to cost the Australian economy 20% of its GDP every year, or $300bn/year
- 1.4 million women face physical violence, and many more some kind of domestic violence
- There are 4,300+ violence restraining orders (Source: WA women, 2015)
- Only 31.7% of senior executive roles in WA public sector are held by women
- 59% of law students are women (in WA) … but only 15% of legal partners & barristers are women … and 20-40% judges (Source: Women’s Report Card 2015)
- Paid parental leave for all … what’s happened to that?
- Returning to work
- there should be a need for experienced, mature workers, who’d like to work 9.30am-2.30pm, 3-4 days
- we need to allow top level execs to be part-time – why not?
- Most of the jobs to be disrupted over the next decade are more heavily associated with women workers = a threat
- Look at
- the Committee for Perth’s ‘Filling the Pool’ recommendations
- Male Champions of Change
- Springboard Accelerator – tech accelerator for women entrepreneurs
Despite some improvements made in recent years, this makes quite startling reading – we have a long way to go to achieve gender equality in WA, and digital disruption offers some opportunities, but also some threats, especially towards female workers.
