Inequality in the workplace has long been a hot topic but gender economist Roy is actively turning that conversation into action. She founded Pipeline Equity, a company that employs artificial intelligence (AI) to identify and drive economic gains through gender equality. "The idea was: If we could change decisions that are made in organizations, we could actually make gender equality a reality in our lifetime, rather than the hundred or so years that we World Economic Forum (WEF) predicts." Roy said.
The WEF's predictions were made before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, which Roy called a "she-session," because women have lost the majority of jobs during this particular economic downturn. "With remote work and with people being at home with children, most caregiving and unpaid work falls to women. "
There has been much talk about such situations being good for gender equality, but Roy warned while working from home could help keep more women in the workforce, it could have a negative impact on female promotions.
"At this moment, there's the opportunity to employ AI to ensure we make progress on gender equality, ""Roy explained. "For companies, that is particularly important because in the 008 Great Recession（经济大萧条），companies that put equality at the core of their crisis management strategy actually increased the speed of their recovery. "
But to close the gender pay gap, we can't start by talking about pay. "Pay is the symptom it's not the disease." Roy said. "Pay is the quantitative (数量的) value that you place on your talent. But the actual value happens before that in performance and potential. "That's where Pipeline's platform steps in.
Using natural language processing, Pipeline's platform reads through performance reviews and calls out any biased phrases. They've found that on average, women are under-valued 4 percent of the time, and that actually impacts their ability to be promoted, as well as their pay.
"As this moment, we have the opportunity to embrace AI as a tool to achieve get equality." Roy said
