American Economic Review
ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)
Gender-Biased Technological Change: Milking Machines and the Exodus of Women from Farming
American Economic Review
(pp. 246–86)
Abstract
This paper studies how gender-biased technological change in agriculture affected women's work in twentieth-century Norway. In the 1950s, dairy farms began widely adopting milking machines to replace milking cows by hand, a task typically performed by young women. We show that the machines pushed rural young women in dairy-intensive areas out of farming. The displaced women moved to cities where they acquired more education and found better-paying, skilled employment. Our results suggest that the adoption of milking machines broke up allocative inefficiencies associated with moving costs across sectors, which improved the economic status of women relative to men.Citation
Ager, Philipp, Marc Goñi, and Kjell G. Salvanes. 2026. "Gender-Biased Technological Change: Milking Machines and the Exodus of Women from Farming." American Economic Review 116 (1): 246–86. DOI: 10.1257/aer.20240167Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- J16 Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
- J24 Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
- J43 Agricultural Labor Markets
- J61 Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
- N34 Economic History: Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy: Europe: 1913-
- N54 Economic History: Agriculture, Natural Resources, Environment, and Extractive Industries: Europe: 1913-
- O33 Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes