Join Peter Loewen in conversation with Maya Tudor, Associate Professor of Public Policy, as they discuss one of the first systematic analyses of gender’s effect on attitudes toward workplace automation and artificial intelligence (AI).

The paper ‘The Gender Gap in Attitudes Toward Workplace Technological Change’, written by Peter Loewen, Beatrice Magistro, Sophie Borwein, Bart Bonkowski, and Blake Lee-Whiting provides one of the first systematic analyses of gender’s effect on attitudes toward workplace automation and artificial intelligence (AI).

Using data from a survey of ten advanced economies and comparing the gender gap in attitudes toward automation and AI with the gender gap in attitudes toward offshoring and market changes, the authors 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, the paper examines 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. Accounting for these various explanations does not substantially reduce the gender gap in automation and AI preferences.