Gender-Biased Technological Change: Milking Machines and the Exodus of Women from Farming

Philipp Ager, Marc Goñi () and Kjell Salvanes ()
Additional contact information
Marc Goñi: University of Bergen
Kjell Salvanes: Norges Handelshøyskole

No 2023-017, Working Papers from Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group

Abstract: This paper studies the link between gender-biased technological change in the agricultural sector and structural transformation in Norway. After WWII, Norwegian farms began widely adopting milking machines to replace the hand milking of cows, a task typically performed by women. Combining population-wide panel data from the Norwegian registry with municipality-level data from the Census of Agriculture, we show that the adoption of milking machines triggered a process of structural transformation by displacing young rural women from their traditional jobs on farms in dairy-intensive municipalities. The displaced women moved to urban areas where they acquired a higher level of education and found better-paid employment. These findings are consistent with the predictions of a Roy model of comparative advantage, extended to account for task automation and the gender division of labor in the agricultural sector. We also quantify significant inter-generational effects of this gender-biased technology adoption. Our results imply that the mechanization of farming has broken deeply rooted gender norms, transformed women’s work, and improved their long-term educational and earning opportunities, relative to men.

Keywords: agriculture; World War II; geographic mobility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J16 J24 J43 J61 N34 O14 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-his and nep-mac
Note: MIP
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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http://humcap.uchicago.edu/RePEc/hka/wpaper/Ager_G ... ased-tech-change.pdf First version, July 26, 2023 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Gender-Biased Technological Change: Milking Machines and the Exodus of Woman From Farming (2024)
Working Paper: Gender-biased technological change: Milking machines and the exodus of women from farming (2023)
Working Paper: Gender-biased technological change: Milking machines and the exodus of women from farming (2023)
Working Paper: Gender-Biased Technological Change: Milking Machines and the Exodus of Women from Farming (2023)
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