The Impact Of Robot Imports On The Gender Wage Gap In Firms ——An Empirical Analysis Based On The Transportation Equipment Manufacturing Industry

Currently China is in a significant stage of transformation of the development mode,and artificial intelligence-guided industrial robots are gradually entering the manufacturing industry.However,technological progress is a double-edged sword,and the import of industrial robots may change the distribution structure of the original work tasks and the structure of labor resources,resulting in technical unemployment.There has always been obvious gender employment discrimination in China’s labor market,due to the characteristics of work tasks and the physical advantages of male labor,the average wage of male labor in the manufacturing industry has always been higher than that of female labor.Exploring whether the biased technological progress brought about by the import of industrial robots will widen or narrow the gender wage gap can provide practical significance for companies to form a rational salary structure to achieve gender employment and establish a sound labor security system in society.Starting from the nature of manufacturing work tasks and the characteristics of different gender labor forces,this paper first sorts out the theoretical mechanism of industrial robot imports affecting the gender wage gap in enterprises.Then uses the database of Chinese industrial enterprises and the database of China Customs Import and Export Database to match and merge,taking the import density of industrial robots as the core explanatory variable and the gender wage gap in each enterprise as the explanatory variable,establishing a fixed effect model,to analyze the impact of the import and use of industrial robots by China’s transportation equipment manufacturing enterprises on the gender wage gap from 2004 to 2014.Finally put forward relevant suggestions according to the research results.From the theoretical mechanism analysis,the application of industrial robots will first replace part of the labor force that performs routine operational tasks,due to the physical gap,the replaced labor force is mainly male,which will narrow the gender wage gap;however,the main purpose of China’s imported industrial robots is to achieve higher quality output,not to replace labor and save labor costs,so enterprises importing industrial robots will expand production and provide more new work opportunities,which will generally increase the relative demand for male labor.Widening the gender wage gap.On the whole,the gender wage gap for imported industrial robots will widen.The empirical results show that the import of industrial robots by China’s transportation equipment manufacturing enterprises will significantly expand the gender wage gap within the enterprise.Through heterogeneity analysis,it is found that the impact of imported robots on the gender wage gap in non-eastern regions of China is greater than that of enterprises in the eastern region,and the degree of influence of enterprises with low survival years is greater than that of enterprises with high survival years.Based on the above results,there are relevant suggestions: from the perspective of individuals,they have to strengthen their own skills;from the perspective of enterprises,the focus should be on adjusting the resource allocation structure in a timely manner;and from the perspective of society,the focus should be on improving the security system.