Allen Blue, co-founder of major professional social network LinkedIn, has raised concerns about occupational inequality in industries like blockchain at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos on Jan. 24. The executive delivered his remarks on the issue in an interview with Abu Dhabi-based news agency The National.
Women are still at risk of being excluded from jobs in fast-growing careers like blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI), a LinkedIn co-founder warned.
The LinkedIn co-founder urged the global community to take measures to prevent the further extension of the gender gap in employment when it comes to jobs of the future:
“If we look forward and those are in fact the jobs of the future, who will have those jobs, we know for sure that if things don’t change men are going to have those jobs and women are not.”
According to Blue, the reason for existing inequality is that women do not have the same access as men to the networks needed to secure these roles. The executive added that if the trend continues, the global community risks ending up with more workplace gender discrimination in five or ten years:
“What that means is if you fast forward the clock and you’ve got too few women in these jobs already the network reinforces that separation over time. So what we end up with in five years or ten years is hardened separations between what type of jobs women have and what type of jobs men have and it is even harder to break down the gender wall.”
According to The National, the WEF has evaluated that it will take 257 years for women to have the same economic opportunities as men. In contrast, to date, women reportedly account for only 30% of tech-related jobs such as AI, blockchain, software engineering and cloud computing.
While blowing the whistle on existing occupational inequality in emerging technologies-related jobs, LinkedIn has been actively working to fight with the trend. According to the report, the company has been making efforts over the past 18 months to ensure that the company contributes to more equal working opportunities.
Goldman Sachs will not take a firm public if it lacks female or diverse
The LinkedIn co-founder’s call comes the next day after Goldman Sachs chief executive David Solomon declared that the investment bank would refuse an initial public offering if the company lacks a director who is “female or diverse.”
Cointelegraph reported previously on gender inequality in blockchain. Less than 5% of the code committed to the top crypto projects on Github was provided by women, some reports say. According to a 2018 Quartz survey, only 8.5% of 378 global crypto and blockchain firms had a female as a founder or co-founder between 2012 to 2018.
As the issue has been under radar for a while, some companies and institutions like Oxford University have established initiatives in order to support diversity in the industry.
Meanwhile, the female crypto community has apparently grown over the past few years. According to data from Bitcoin statistics website Coin Dance, Bitcoin community engagement by women has grown from around 5% in May 2018 to more than 12% to date.
LinkedIn Says Blockchain Is Top Skill for 2020
Blockchain is listed as the number one “hard skill” for 2020 in a new report compiled by jobs site LinkedIn.»Last year, cloud computing, artificial intelligence and analytical reasoning led LinkedIn’s global list of the most in-demand hard skills,» LinkedIn wrote in the report. «They’re all on the list again this year, but a skill we weren’t even looking at a year ago – blockchain – tops the list of most in-demand hard skills for 2020.»
After analyzing the profiles of the users who are “getting hired at the highest rates”, LinkedIn researchers found “blockchain” to be the most in-demand skill. So the top ranking might actually be a result of the higher wages employers are ready to pay people who can ostensibly do the blockchains.
«Blockchain has emerged from the once shadowy world of cryptocurrency to become a business solution in search of problems,» LinkedIn writes. «Which means that you don’t have to be in financial services to be seeking new hires who have background and expertise in putting blockchain to use.»
While there are different views on what benefits distributed ledgers can bring in reality, the business world “is voting with its jobs,» the report says, mentioning the business giants that have already caught the virus: IBM, Oracle, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, Amazon and American Express.
The companies that value blockchain-related skills most are in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Australia, LinkedIn wrote.
Even though the technology was absent from LinkedIn’s 2019 rankings, blockchain developers topped the site’s emerging jobs list in 2018.
There are also more and more blockchain and crypto-related job postings on top headhunting websites, according to a November report by Indeed, a LinkedIn competitor. The number of such job ads rose by 26 percent from 2018–2019, the report said.
