Scandinavian Working Papers in Economics

Discussion Paper Series in Economics,
Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics

No 16/2023: Gender-biased technological change: Milking machines and the exodus of women from farming

Philipp Ager (), Marc Goñi () and Kjell Gunnar Salvanes ()
Additional contact information
Philipp Ager: University of Mannheim
Marc Goñi: University of Bergen
Kjell Gunnar Salvanes: Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, Postal: NHH, Department of Economics, Helleveien 30, N-5045 Bergen, Norway

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: Farming; Gender bias

JEL-codes: J16

Language: English

100 pages, July 8, 2023

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