Digital skills may help increase female workforce in Saudi Arabia, Accenture research finds

Globally, digital savvy women are helping to close the gender gap in the workplace. And 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 and level the playing field.  

A new research report from Accenture (NYSE:ACN), 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 behind 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 the workplace could be achieved in 45 years in developing nations, versus 85 years at the current pace.

“Digital fluency enables access to education, workforce flexibility and new avenues of finding employment,” said Omar Boulos, Accenture’s regional managing director for Middle East and North Africa. “Because women are underrepresented in the workforce in most countries, they are a significant source of untapped talent— and by extension; this untapped talent has the most to gain from digital fluency. With governments in GCC emphasizing on developing human capital through education and training to achieve economic goals, strengthening digital skills is mission-critical in creating a workforce that is adaptable, agile and aware of the emerging challenges of future economies.” 

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 Saudi Arabia, women use digital to prepare for and find work more frequently than men (90 percent and 72 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 70 percent (66 percent) of all survey respondents in Saudi Arabia – men and women combined—agreed that digital enables them to work from home; 64 percent said it provides a better balance between personal and professional lives; and 70 percent report digital has increased access to job opportunities.

 However, digital fluency has also had a more positive impact on the education of women in developing countries like Saudi Arabia. More than two-thirds (68 percent) of women compared to 44 percent of women in developed countries said that the Internet was important to their education. Survey data also shows that women in developing countries are much more positive about the power digital has to level the playing field for women, 80 percent and 62 percent respectively

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Methodology

To identify and better understand the role of digital fluency in workforce gender equality, the Accenture Digital Fluency Model was developed. A survey was conducted in December 2015 and January 2016 of more than 4,900 women and men in 31 countries to assess the extent to which people are using digital technologies in their personal and home life, as well as in their education and work. The sample included equal representation of working men and women, representing three generations (Millennials, Gen X and Baby Boomers) across all workforce levels at companies of varying size. The margin of error for the total sample was approximately +/- 1.4 percent. Digital technologies include virtual coursework, digital collaboration tools (webcams, instant messaging), social media platforms and use of digital devices, such as smart phones. Survey responses were combined with published reports and publicly available information on education, employment and leadership and research from the World Bank, the OECD, World Economic Forum and the ITU World Telecommunication. Countries included in the Model are Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Greater China (includes Hong Kong and Taiwan), India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, the Nordics (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden), Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom and United States.