In July 2017, Jack Ma made a wonderful speech at the Women's Business Conference. In Jack Ma's speech, we learned that women occupy a powerful position in his view of future employment. "In the past, we always called for the company to give women a chance, but for now, the proportion of women in employment is getting higher and higher, and the future will have to fight for opportunities, because it is men's power because male strengths and logical advantages will be unbearable in the face of artificial intelligence, and women's emotional thinking, in the future society will play a big role, that is to say, women's advantages in the future will be further obvious, and the advantages of men will cease to exist. “

This view will undoubtedly make men and women workers start thinking about their ability to work, focus, and positioning. But for so many years, have women really got more and more advantages in their work?

Since the 1990s, as the economic globalization has been further developed, more and more problems have been faced on economies in the world. The financial crisis, the devaluation of the currency, the tax reform, the exchange rate changes, etc. have become the world's economy challenge.

Unemployment rates, as the first manifestation of economic change, also influenced. However, the rate of unemployment among men and women can clearly show the strengths and weaknesses of men and women in employment.

According to UN statistics’s summarize to the world's average jobless rate for 1990-2014. We can see that over the past 20 years, the world's average unemployment rate fluctuated in several places, but the overall trend is still on the rise.

When we divide the proportion of unemployed men and women by gender, we can clearly see that the trend of the average male unemployment rate coincides with or substantially lower than the world average rate of unemployment, but the average unemployment of women, the rate is consistently above the world average for the jobless rate, with a larger margin. From this clear comparison, we can find that in the past 20 years, women still face more challenges and difficulties in employment than men.

For such a problem, we began to think what caused the unemployment rate of women being larger, and changes being stronger. First, the common problem of sex discrimination and discrimination pose obstacles to the entry of some groups into the labor market, and they make it more difficult for these groups to retain their jobs. Due to the social role played by women in their daily life, such as pregnancy and menstrual cycle, a lot of work needs to be avoided.

Second, in a world of gender equality, men in 18 countries could still legally block their wives from working outside.

At the same time, the proportion of women employed informally worldwide is larger, such as street vendors, domestic workers, peasants and others. This makes up 95% of women in South Asia, 89% in sub-Saharan Africa and in Latin America And the Caribbean can reach 59%.

In addition, the female labor force in the global workforce has lower status, and men are more likely to hold the leading position in the industry. For example, only 4% of Fortune 500 CEOs is female. And for men and women who work on the same job, women earn only 77 cents for every dollar men make. In this way, some existing problems in law, social status and gender discrimination have all contributed to the long-term unemployment rate among women and men and the world average.

We can hope for Jack Ma's guess for the future. However, in such a long-lasting social environment, we would like to see that the unemployment rate of women can be balanced with men or improved their status in employment, but afraid it will take a long time.