Despite progress in the pursuit of equal rights, OECD data leave no doubt: women in the EU still earn, on average, nine percent more than men. less than men employed full-time. Over the years, these differences accumulate, creating the so-called pension gap. This problem is further exacerbated by the fact that women are more likely to interrupt their careers due to caring responsibilities. This ultimately leads to lower benefits and a greater risk of poverty in old age.
The situation is further complicated by the disproportion in the workload of unpaid work, with women doing almost twice as much work per day as men. Effect? Less time to develop competences and lower chance of participating in technological projects, which often determine promotion.
The authors of the current OECD report “Gender Equality in a Changing World” warn that digital transformation – from automation to remote work – is not gender neutral. It requires new competences and ways of working that do not always take into account differences in women's experiences or burdens. If they are not incorporated into digitalization strategies, new technologies will only perpetuate and reinforce old inequalities.
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More stress and less sense of agency
The most clear dimension of this new gap is revealed by this year's research by the SWPS, PJATK and NASK team – “Women Have It Worse: an ICT Workplace Digital Transformation Stress Gender Gap”.
An analysis conducted among employees of a Polish financial company undergoing digital transformation showed that women experience a much higher level of Digital Transformation Stress (DTS) than men. Importantly, the study excluded general differences in stress levels, focusing only on that related to digital change.
Researchers gave this condition a name “digital helplessness”. And it's not about a lack of skills, but primarily about a lack of faith in one's own abilities in areas perceived as “technical”. This was confirmed in the analysis of 17.5 thousand reports to IT departments: women reported 63 percent all technical problems, and were more likely to use negatively emotional language and were less likely to give high priority to reports.
The authors of the study explain this fact by the effect stereotype threat (stereotype threat). It's about the fear that by making a mistake in the area of new technologies, they will unconsciously confirm the harmful stereotype about “women who do not know computers.” This pressure means that even women with high ICT competences feel more stressed when they have to demonstrate them.
When work culture increases stress
Shibo Han, who examined almost 800 employees of the ICT sector in China, reached similar conclusions. The results, published in 2024 in Frontiers in Psychology, show that women are more likely than men to perceive technology as a source of stress and risk at work.
However, the author shows that the problem is not digitization itself, but organizational culture: in companies where technology is perceived as a “male domain”, the stress associated with digitalization is disproportionately higher for women. This creates a real gap in adaptation to new tools.
Camouflaged exclusion from the labor market
The digital gap also has a deeper structural dimension. Today, women constitute only 11-24 percent. ICT specialists in OECD countries. This imbalance translates into innovation data: in 2018–2021, only four percent ICT patents were assigned exclusively to women (and only 20% had a co-author). In 2023, startups founded by women in the climate tech sector received only 58 financing agreements – compared to 826 for companies founded by men. This is not a lack of competence, but the result of persistent stereotypes – from education to company culture, which often rewards “masculine” ways of thinking about innovation.
The OECD indicates that if these differences persist, women will be more likely to lose their jobs in the process of automation. Today, they are more likely to declare that they are afraid that their position will disappear due to lack of technical skills or access to training.
Remote work, often perceived as a remedy for problems with combining roles, turned out to be another area of inequality. Tomasz Kukulski, director of the CEE region at Bibby Financial Services, drew attention to this paradox during the Humanites Institute conference. In his team, many young mothers chose to work from home after the pandemic to more easily combine professional and family responsibilities. Today, however, he sees the other side of the coin: less frequent presence in the office reduces the level of interaction and negatively affects the team's innovation. This leaves managers with a difficult choice: train people how to function in “home solitude” or order a return to the office?
Growing inequalities and stereotypes regarding professional roles
Where professional stereotypes persistdigitalization has drastically different consequences for women and men. While the latter go to sectors that benefit from digitalization, women – more often to those that are threatened by it.
The psychological aspect is also important here – women are more aware of threats and more often declare uncertainty about technological changes. The problem is even more serious because it does not affect all women to the same extent. As the OECD report shows, digital transformation is particularly painful for older workers, migrants and single mothers. They often have limited access to retraining, less time to learn new technologies (due to caring responsibilities), and are more exposed to layoffs in the automation process.
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The crux of the problem is ensuring that women feel equally safe in the technological environment. If half of employees feel they can't keep up and are afraid to ask for help, it is not an individual's problem, but a symptom of the failure of the entire system.
OECD experts point to specific solutions: retraining programs taking into account the gender perspective, sensitivity training for IT departments and the fight against stereotypes in education from an early age. Although some companies are already introducing such mechanisms, the scale of these changes is still insufficient considering the pace set by the digital revolution itself.
