The Gender Gap in Attitudes Toward Workplace Technological Change

Abstract

We provide one of the first systematic analyses of gender’s effect on attitudes toward workplace automation and artificial intelligence (AAI). Using data from a survey of ten advanced economies, and comparing the gender gap in attitudes toward automation with the gender gap in attitudes toward offshoring and market changes, we provide evidence of a significant gender gap in attitudes toward the perceived fairness of technological adoption in the workplace. Drawing in part on insights from the literature on gender differences in attitudes toward other economic shocks, we examine four sets of potential explanations for this gap: differences in economic self-interest, knowledge gaps, different levels of sociotropic concern, and differences in social status perceptions. We find that accounting for these various explanations does not substantially reduce the gender gap in automation preferences. We conclude with analysis using the Kitagawa-Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition method to gain insight into the sources of this gap.