Women make gains in changing job market, HR News, ETHRWorld

By Michelle Rendall,

Melbourne: Women have mostly benefited from the polarisation of the workforce but the challenge is to keep those gains.

Despite the extensive gender pay gaps exposed in the release of Australian data last week, women have mostly benefited from big changes to the workforce in recent decades.

The loss of middle-skilled jobs, such as technicians, sheetmetal trades workers and industrial machine operators, means workers are now concentrated more in either high- or low-skilled occupations.

This polarisation of work has been driven since the 1980s by technological and economic changes, which led to the disappearance of manufacturing jobs in developed economies.

Because of that, there has been a renewed discussion about how to return middle-wage manufacturing jobs to developed economies.

In the US, Donald Trump campaigned on repeated promises of returning manufacturing jobs to “Make America Great Again”. In 2020, the Australian government proposed the “Modern Manufacturing Strategy” planning an expenditure of AUD 1,509.8 million by 2024.

With every technological advancement, there are winners and losers. In the case of employment polarisation, women have been winners.

This is because middle-skill jobs used to…