Kuala Lumpur, 10 September 2021 - Coursera, Inc. (NYSE: COUR), one of the largest online learning platforms in the world, released a new study that examines the pandemic’s impact on skills and learning trends among women. The Women and Skills Report compares pre-pandemic enrollment and performance data with trends observed on the Coursera platform since the onset of the pandemic through June 2021. Women in Malaysia are learning online at higher rates compared to pre-pandemic, representing 51% of new learners in 2021, up from 42% in 2019, according to Coursera data. More women are also participating in certificate training programs aimed at entry-level digital jobs.
The unemployment crisis caused by the pandemic may have disproportionately impacted women. As of June 2021, the women labor force participation rate in Malaysia remained stable at 55.2%, though the trend was upwards for men, recorded at 81.6%. Yet, the share for women falls short for digital jobs.
According to Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC), women now make up 35% of the total digital economy workforce, demonstrating an encouraging improvement from the past years. Malaysian women learners have also increased their investment in learning new skills on Coursera despite the more difficult labor market conditions.
“Our research suggests that gender gaps in online learning narrowed during the pandemic, even as gender employment gaps widened,” said Jeff Maggioncalda, Coursera CEO. “We are encouraged by how women are embracing online learning to develop new skills that can help accelerate their return to work and promote economic mobility.”
Malaysia insights from the Women and Skills Report include:
- Women are turning to online education at higher rates than pre-pandemic. In 2021, over half (51%) of new learners in Malaysia are women, up from 42% in 2019. This brings the total number of registered women in the country to 190,000 (45% of the 410,000 total learners in the country).
- More women are enrolling in STEM courses and entry-level Professional Certificates. In Malaysia, the share of overall course enrollments from women increased from 36% in 2019 to 45% in 2021. For STEM courses, the gender gap narrowed from 29% enrollments from women in 2019 to 36% in 2021. Women’s enrollments in entry-level Professional Certificates have gone up from 25% in 2019 to 32% in 2021. These certificates, from industry leaders such as Google, IBM, and Facebook, are designed to prepare learners without a college degree or technology experience for a wide range of high-demand digital jobs.
- Top skills among Malaysian women show a balanced investment in human and digital skills. Top 10 skills from the past year include leadership skills, like communication (70,000 enrollments from women in Malaysia), management (50,000), entrepreneurship (50,000) and marketing (40,000). Women are also investing in STEM skills, like probability and statistics (50,000), computer programming (40,000), and machine learning (40,000). Top courses that teach job-relevant and personal development skills, includes The Science of Wellbeing from Yale University, Programming for Everybody (Getting Started with Python) from University of Michigan, Excel Skills for Business: Essentials from Macquarie University, Learning How to Learn from Deep Tech Solutions, and Machine Learning from Stanford University.
- Product innovations help grow women’s participation in online learning. Mobile is an incredibly powerful tool ensuring flexibility in learning. Forty-four percent of women learners in Malaysia access Coursera on mobile devices, as compared to 41% men. Other factors contributing to enrollment increases from women include adding practice quizzes before challenging assessments, listing most common mistakes for peer-reviewed assignments, and distributing assessments throughout a course.
“I earned my computer science degree with only a handful of women alongside me, and while a great deal has changed since then, we still have important work to do to increase women’s representation in technology and leadership,” said Betty Vandenbosch, Chief Content Officer at Coursera. “Access to flexible, job-relevant education can help women learn the new skills they need to enter high-demand roles and achieve better gender balance in the workforce.”
With over 87 million learners and 5,000 courses on the platform, Coursera has one of the largest data sets for identifying and measuring skill trends. The Women and Skills Report includes data from 40 million new learners who registered during the pandemic between 1 January 2020 and 30 June 2021.
