By Archana Arakkal, Practice Lead: Intelligent Data Engineering at Synthesis Technologies
While many South African women find it challenging to access positions in the ICT sector in general, the recent interest in artificial intelligence (AI) provides them with a perfect platform to acquire new skills to access more specialist jobs. AI brings with it the opportunity for women to reinvent themselves and reskill for a more digitally-driven environment. Women can embrace the new wave of technology to align their skill sets to better reflect the agile needs of modern organisations.
Of course, AI opens the doors for all genders to embrace the thought revolution currently underway in ICT. This starts at a young age with learners getting access to more information about STEM that appeals to their curiosity in how the Fourth Revolution is improving the world around them. Over the years, some of humanity has been lost when it comes to skills development.
People have had to become more corporate-focused and, as a result, more thick-skinned to approach their jobs like machines. Emotional intelligence has fallen by the wayside in the push to become more efficient due especially in the ICT sector. However, AI brings with it the opportunity to move more mundane jobs to the machines and enable people to strengthen their softer skills to deliver strategic value. Freeing up this capacity to build more emotional intelligence can help people across genders become more fulfilled. Women and men bring with them different approaches. It is therefore not a ‘one versus the other’ scenario. Teams that benefit from these respective skill sets stand to become more dynamic, agile, and relevant to modern organisational needs.