E-commerce for Women in 2020

2020 has been a great year for e-commerce. Although, pandemic has hard hit the world and shook even the deep-rooted businesses but for the world of e-commerce, it was a blessing in disguise as it brought all the human traffic to the web-world! It created numerous opportunities for people working in this industry. In particular, women’s role and involvement in this industry cannot be overlooked. However, women are still in the struggling phase. A research conducted by Peterson Institute explains this more explicitly, it says that females in their team are more profitable. However, there’s only 4.2% of the Fortune 500 companies are managed by women.

In order to fill this gap, many organizations and communities have taken initiatives. Shoptalk is one known name that organizes tech talk events where the entire retail ecosystem gathers and explores the latest market trends, technological advancements, and emerging business models in the e-commerce industry. To promote women in the E-commerce industry’s leading positions, all the speakers, including keynotes at Shoptalk 2020, were women.

Woman are side by side to men in almost all the fields now and since last couple of years. They have become the topic of discussion due to their zealous hard work, owing to which many organizations realize the significant gap in their teams.

In the Asian region, Arab states in particular, majority of women are working in retail, tourism, and doing hospital jobs. And ever since the pandemic has hit the planet, these jobs seem to be struggling. But thanks to the technology, e-commerce has rescued a lot of industries and retail is one of them. It is among the top-performing e-commerce in which a high number of women were recognized for their contribution to redefining the industry and reaching the unimagined levels of success.

On the other hand, this pandemic has also cost 700,000 Middle Eastern women their jobs as per the Oxfam report. The ratio of unemployed women in hard-hit countries like Lebanon is almost 63% compared to the last two years. This pandemic has widened the digital gap between men and women of Arab. This means that the primary concern of the Arab women in 2020 has been to retain their jobs while only those with digital skills have these opportunities available.

A survey which was recently conducted by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reveals that women and young people in Australia have been majorly affected because of the Covid-19 recession. Morrison’s government has completely ignored women behind in their budget. In response, the IMF called for targeted policy intervention that has protected women and young workers’ employment prospects. Meanwhile, IMF also analyzed that there should be a worker allocation from sectors that are likely to shrink on a long-term basis like travel, to the emerging sectors like e-commerce while retraining and reskilling them.

Based on the above discussion, it can be summarized that the contribution of women in the industry has started to get recognition and acknowledgment, unlike the earlier times.
Women can excel with flying colors, if given relevant opportunities and platforms. The pitfalls of gender biases have been understood as women have proven their skill set in the e-commerce industry.

E-commerce for women in 2020 has been a challenging yet productive year. It backed the organizations to understand that limiting female leaders is confining their outcomes, productivity, and performance in the global market.