An analysis found that the more women an occupation employs, the more it may be exposed to AI automation. With risk concentrated in office and administrative jobs, the spread of AI could become a new variable in gender gaps in the labour market.

On Sept. 6 (local time), Japanese media outlet Gigazine reported that Leonora Risse (레오노라 리세), an associate professor of economics at Queensland University of Technology, and Elise Stephenson (엘리스 스테펜슨), deputy director at the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at the Australian National University, compared AI data from Australian government agency Jobs and Skills Australia (JSA) with gender ratios by occupation.

JSA rates the potential for generative AI to perform tasks within each occupation as “automation exposure”. The analysis found office and administrative jobs were a representative field with high automation exposure, with more than 70 percent of workers women. The field accounted for about one-fifth of all jobs held by women in Australia.

Among the 20 occupations with the highest automation exposure, 15 were female-majority roles, and 5 of those had more than 80 percent women. They included accounting clerks, general clerks, and human resources and payroll staff. By contrast, 17 of the 20 occupations with the lowest exposure were male-majority roles.

Differences also appeared in the hiring market. Total online job postings in June fell about 1.7 percent from a year earlier, but postings for personal assistants and bookkeeping staff dropped about 22 percent and those for general clerks fell about 9 percent. By contrast, concrete workers, who have low exposure to AI automation, rose 5.5 percent and electricians increased 14.3 percent. Still, these figures alone cannot confirm that AI directly caused the decline in hiring.

The researchers stressed, “There is a need to reflect a gender perspective in AI policy.” They said it is necessary to build systems for retraining and career changes that identify transferable skills among office workers exposed to automation and connect them to new jobs.