Robots and the Gender Pay Gap in Europe

Abstract

<p>Could robotization make the gender pay gap worse? We provide the first large-scale evidence on the impact of industrial robots on the gender pay gap using data from 20 European countries. We show that robot adoption increases both male and female earnings but also increases the gender pay gap. Using an instrumental variable strategy, we find that a ten percent increase in robotization leads to a 1.8 percent increase in the gender pay gap. These results are mainly driven by countries with high levels of gender inequality and outsourcing destination countries. We then explore the mechanisms behind this effect and find that our results can be explained by the fact that men at medium- and high-skill occupations disproportionately benefit from robotization (through a productivity effect). We rule out the possibility that our results are driven by mechanical changes in the gender composition of the workforce nor by inflows or outflows from the manufacturing sector.</p>

For whom the bell tolls: The firm-level effects of automation on wage and gender inequality

“…This is also the conclusion reached by Sorgner et al (2017), who take a broader perspective into consideration by noting several dimensions of the gender equality issue. Focusing more specifically on the gender pay gap, Aksoy et al (2020) employ country-industry level data and report that a 10% increase in robot-related investments (data being sourced from the International Federation of Robotics) is associated with a 1.8% increment in the gender wage gap. As a common limitation of many contributions in this stream of literature, the authors cannot directly observe the effect on employment and wage associated with an investment within the firm, as data are available at the country, industry and demographic levels.…”

Effects of automation on the gender pay gap: the case of Estonia

“…Finally, the paper adds insights to the recent contributions in the field of labour economics (Aksoy et al, 2020;Brussevich et al, 2018), where the analysis on variations of tasks show that female workers execute less assignments requiring interpersonal and analytical skills or physical labour, as well as perform tasks that are characterized by a lack of job variability, very limited opportunities for learning and development. In addition, the respective differences in wages may depend a lot on the following factor: in a number of countries women are underrepresented in the higher-level positions that influences the possibility to acquire higher wages.…”

“…The above-mentioned fact shows that analysing the impact of automation and robotization on the gender pay gap is fundamentally important. The gains women received due to the introduction of policies aiming to enlarge the amount of women present in the paid workforce, along with corresponding equal remuneration, can deteriorate if women are disadvantaged by the process of automation (Aksoy et al, 2020;Brussevich et al, 2018). This could be related to different aspects: a lack of specific knowledge needed for certain typologies of automation; the relative lower presence of women in occupations or sectors where automation have positive effects on salaries; and country-specific issues.…”

“…The paper investigates and analyses the effects of technological change on labour dynamics and the gender pay gap, determines the interconnection between automation and the gender pay gap, taking into account contributing factors. The technological changes, automation and their effect on labour dynamics, being the research object of the given article, have been previously analysed by a number of studies (Aksoy, Özcan, & Philipp, 2020;Acemoglu & Restrepo, 2020;Graetz & Michaels, 2018;Domini et al, 2020b). The outcomes provide the following evidence while a decrease in wages in the USA due to automation has been documented (Acemoglu & Restrepo, 2020), evidence of an increase in wages and labour productivity in European countries was also detected (Graetz & Michaels, 2018).…”

Automation and the Future of Work: How Rhetoric Shapes the Response in Policy Preferences

“…In recent decades, growth in the automation of work has increased inequalities between workers (Aksoy, Ozcan, and Philipp 2020;Van Reenen 2011), and between workers and capital-owners (Autor and Salomons 2018). These trends, coupled with predictions that many more workers will be displaced by automating technologies going forward (Frey and Osborne 2017), have led some politicians to advocate redistributive policies that could decouple growth in automation from growth in inequality.…”