Digital skills help narrow workplace gender gap: Accenture

Women who frequently use digital technologies (such as social media, mobile phone and cloud) are helping to close the gender gap in the workplace, said a report by the professional services company Accenture.

The report said that digital fluency, the extent to which people embrace and use digital technologies to become more knowledgeable, connected and effective, plays a key role in helping women achieve gender equality in their education, employment and advancement at work.

The report, Getting to Equal: How Digital is Helping Close the Gender Gap at Work, provides empirical proof that women are using digital skills to gain an edge in preparing for work, finding work and advancing at work. While women still lag men in digital fluency in all but a handful of countries, improving their digital skills can change the picture.

If governments and businesses can double the pace at which women become digitally fluent, gender equality could be achieved in 25 years in developed nations, versus 50 years at the current pace. Gender equality in workplace could be achieved in 45 years in developing nations, versus 85 years at the current pace.

"Women represent an untapped talent pool that can help fill the gap between the skills needed to stay competitive and the talent available," said Pierre Nanterme, Accenture's chairman and chief executive officer." There is a clear opportunity for governments and businesses to collaborate on efforts that will empower more women with digital skills – and accelerate gender equality in the workforce.

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Although digital fluency helps women advance in their careers, its impact has not closed the gender gap among executives -- or extended to pay equality. Men are still, by far, the dominant earners by household for all three generations. This will change as more millennial women and digital natives move into management.

In Greater China, men use digital to prepare for and find work slightly more frequently than women (97 percent and 95 percent, respectively). Yet, the research found that, when women and men have the same level of digital proficiency, women are better at leveraging it to find work. Nearly 50 percent of all respondents in the region – men and women combined – agreed that digital enables them to work from home; 61 percent said it provides a better balance between personal and professional lives; and 43 percent report digital has increased access to job opportunities.

Getting to Equal: How Digital is Helping Close the Gender Gap at Work assessed results from an online survey conducted from December 2015 to January 2016 of more than 4,900 working women and men in 31 countries.