When industries replace workers with robots, wages rise for all on average due to productivity gains, but the difference in pay for men and women widens.
Cevat Giray Aksoy at King鈥檚 College London and his colleagues analysed the effects of automation in 20 European countries using data聽from the statistical office of the聽European Union. They found that the number of robots per 10,000 workers increased, on average, by 47 per cent between 2006 and 2014. On average, a 10聽per cent rise in robot workers in聽a country led to a 1.8 per cent rise聽in the discrepancy in pay between genders.
Aksoy and his team say this is because there are more men in medium- and high-skilled jobs, and聽these roles disproportionately benefit from automation. They say progress in recent decades to reduce the gender pay gap could be quickly eroded by automation. On average, the introduction of minimum wages reduced the gender pay gap by around 2 per cent, so robots have had a much larger effect.
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The widening of the gender pay聽gap was more pronounced in countries where gender inequality was already high and labour laws provide less support for women in work. In countries where gender inequality was low, automation had聽no statistically significant effect聽on the gender pay gap.
鈥淕overnments should force companies to be more transparent when it comes to their pay schemes, so we can see where discrepancies are coming from,鈥� says Aksoy. He聽thinks governments should introduce coding and high-tech skills to school curricula and provide ongoing support for education among adults to help people train for new careers when jobs are lost to automation.
鈥淏ut at the same time they should聽make sure that the system and the labour market is fair to everyone,鈥� he says.
European Economic Review
