Workplace Routinization and the Gender Gap in College Enrollment

Automation and Gender: Implications for Occupational Segregation and the Gender Skill Gap

“…More directly related to our work, suggestive evidence that computerization may have led to more pronounced employment polarization for women and larger employment gains in high-skill occupations for women relative to men was first noted by Autor and Wasserman (2013) and investigated in follow-up work by Cerina et al (2021). Recent work by Chuan and Zhang (2023) explores how automation di↵erentially a↵ects the job opportunities of non-college men and women, and the resulting implications for college enrollment. They show that the decline in routine-occupations as a result of automation led to a more pronounced decline in job opportunities for non-college women relative to non-college men, and argue that this is a key explanation for the larger increase in female college enrollment relative to men from 1980 to 2000.…”