Description:

Speaker Myera Rashid

Title: Engine of Mobility: The Typewriter and Women's Outcomes

Abstract: While much is known about the gendered effects of household technological changes, little is known about the impact of workplace technological changes on women's outcomes. In this project, I study the effect of the adoption of the typewriter into the US labor force on women's outcomes in the 20th century. Exploiting variation in the demand for typists across industries coupled with the geographic composition of industries, I document that the adoption of the typewriter and the resulting gendering of the typist occupation cause an increase in women's labor force participation and a decrease in their likelihood of being married and having children. I show that while the rapid adoption of the typewriter causes White women to leave the household and enter offices, it also increases the labor participation of Black women who replace White women by working in the household services industry. Lastly, I find that the typewriter acts as an engine of mobility for women through marriage. The typist occupation offers women the opportunity to work alongside and later marry men of higher socioeconomic status, a benefit not provided by alternate occupations for women at the time.