"Artificial intelligence is reshaping work faster than policy or leadership can adapt. U.S. companies report record productivity, yet payrolls barely rise. Goldman Sachs estimates that AI automation could affect the equivalent of 300 million full-time jobs worldwide. Investors are cheering the efficiency. But history suggests that when work becomes scarce, societies ration opportunity, and women often pay the price. The pattern is familiar."
"During the Great Depression, dozens of U.S. states and school districts enacted "marriage bars," policies that barred married women from employment or forced them to resign upon marriage, claiming to "protect" male breadwinners. After World War II, governments closed wartime child-care centers and urged women out of factories so returning soldiers could reclaim work. In post-war Japan and Australia, the "male breadwinner compact" guaranteed men lifetime jobs while women were steered into part time work or unpaid care."
"AI may now drive a similar re-ordering. "Headcount-light" companies can scale output without adding workers. Knowledge-based roles once thought immune to automation: legal research, accounting, customer service and the like, are being rewritten by software. For many displaced workers, especially mid-career professionals, retraining programs rarely keep pace with technology's curve. As the labor market polarizes, some voices are recasting gender equity itself as a problem."
Artificial intelligence is accelerating productivity gains while payroll growth remains muted, potentially reducing available work. Goldman Sachs estimates AI automation could affect the equivalent of 300 million full-time jobs worldwide, and investors favor efficiency. Historical policy responses to scarce work often rationed opportunity, excluding women through marriage bars, closure of child-care, and male-breadwinner compacts that shifted women into part-time or unpaid care. AI enables "headcount-light" scaling and is automating knowledge-based roles like legal research, accounting, and customer service. Retraining programs frequently fail to match technological pace, increasing risk of labor-market polarization and disproportionate harm to women.
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