Women Are Less Likely To Get Replaced By Robots At Work

As technology continues to advance, there's a constant fear that it'll get too smart and eventually push us out of our jobs, causing us to be replaced by robots, instead. Well, according to a new study, if this ends up happening, one sex will be affected more than the other will.

Research from PwC has found that 38 percent of jobs in the United States could face automation by the early 2030s, but women won't be as affected as much as men will, the New York Post reports. They estimate that 35 percent of men's jobs will be at risk compared to 26 percent of women's jobs at risk. The reason: men tend to dominate jobs requiring lower education levels, such as transportation and manufacturing, which are easier to delegate to robots than jobs requiring social skills such as education and health, jobs women tend to dominate.

The study, which also examined how automation would affect other countries, estimated that by the early 2030s, the United Kingdom will have 38 percent of jobs threatened by automation, while Germany will have 35 percent and Japan will have 21 percent.

According to Quartz, this isn't the first time the gender divide regarding automation has been uncovered. Back in 2013, two Oxford researchers conducted a study that involved the analysis of skills required for over 700 different jobs. Occupations men were concentrated in, such as construction and carpentry, had a 70 percent chance of being threatened by automation. Meanwhile, a female-dominated job like nursing had 0.009 percent chance of being replaced by robots.

Although we may be seeing more robots doing jobs once held by humans, PwC researchers say that automation might not lead to less employment for everybody. Instead, jobs might just change, which we certainly hope is the case.

Just how efficient are robots compared to humans? As reported by Yahoo Finance, a study done by MIT and Boston University researchers found that one robot takes 5.6 jobs per 1,000 workers.