Technology, routinization and wage inequality: gender differences in the case of Uruguay

Abstract Technology has changed the way we work, creating and destroying employment but especially modifying the occupational tasks we perform. This paper seeks to analyze the contribution of technology to changes in the distribution of wages in Uruguay and its differences between genders. We address this question from the task-based approach perspective. We use the recentered influence function regression decomposition method to analyze men and women wages and the gender wage gap over the period 2005–2015. Our estimates suggest that introducing occupational tasks linked to technology into the analysis contributes to explain changes in the wage distribution as well as in the gender wage gap. Contrary to the routinization hypothesis predictions we find that technology has an overall equalizing effect but, it pushes up the gender wage gap among private employees except at the very top of the wage distribution.