WOMEN are being “left behind” as the economy evolves with the best paid new jobs going to men, figures reveal today.

Almost 400,000 jobs held by women in the public sector, banking and retail have been lost since 2011, the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) has found.

The charity warned of a “double-whammy” that has hurt female workers, who lost out to the best-paid jobs in the “new economy” and have borne the brunt of austerity measures in the public sector.

Programmers, software developers, human resources managers and directors were among the top 20 fastest growing occupations.

Private-sector roles such as retail cashiers, personal assistants, hairdressers and checkout operators were among those rapidly shrinking, leaving female workers further in loss, according to the analysis.

Many jobs in the new economy are well paid but only one in 20 new coders and programmers are women, the research found.

The RSA’s Benedict Dellot said: “The advent of autonomous vehicles, personal voice assistants and picking and packing machines in warehouses shows that the age of automation is well and truly upon us.

“The evidence is stacking up that women are being left behind in the new economy. We knew that the tech industry was highly gendered but the scale of the problem is shocking.

“The good news is that there is time to respond. We are still in the early stages of the age of automation and many jobs are yet to be affected.”

Mr Dellot said the challenge for government, employers and educators is to ensure the 2020s “play out differently” to this decade so that everyone “shares in the spoils” of new technology.