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Seminar in Economics | with Kjell Salvanes

Department of Economics welcomes you to a seminar with Kjell Salvanes, Norwegian School of Economics (NHH)

Welcome to this Higher Seminar in Economics organized by the Department of Economics, SSE. The seminar speaker is Kjell Salvanes, Norvegian School of Economics (NHH) who will present "Gender-biased technological change: Milking machines and the exodus of women from farming".

(Philipp Ager Marc Goñi Kjell G. Salvanes)

  

Abstract

This paper studies how gender-biased technological change in agriculture affected women’s work in 20th-century Norway. After WWII, dairy farms began widely adopting milking machines to replace the hand milking of cows, a task typically performed by young women. We show that the adoption of milking machines pushed young rural women out of farming in dairy-intensive municipalities. The displaced women moved to cities where they acquired more education and found better-paid employment. Our results suggest that the adoption of milking machines broke up allocative inefficiencies across sectors, which improved the economic status of women relative to men.

 

The seminar takes place at Stockholm School of Economics, Sveavägen 65, room A750.

Please contact kathrine.abelson@hhs.se if you have any questions.

Dept. of Economics Economics Seminar in economics