Robots and Women in Manufacturing

Automation transforms the combination of tasks performed by machines and humans and reshapes labor markets by replacing and reinstating jobs. This article studies whether industrial robots affect the share of women in manufacturing employment and whether this mechanism depends on levels of female labor force participation. It constructs an industry-level panel dataset of eleven manufacturing industries across fourteen countries during 1993–2015. The article uses dynamic panel data models that control for the autocorrelation in female shares and endogenize robotization and female labor force participation. Robotization is associated with an increase in female shares in manufacturing employment. However, this positive association decreases as female labor force participation increases. The article also finds a similar conditional effect of robots in women's employment levels, but not for men's employment. Partitions of the sample suggest that the link between robotization and women in manufacturing varies according to preexisting industry-level labor productivity and income levels in the country.