CURSES! the damn arena gave the dwarves only 1 gauntlet, and I don't feel like redoing the testing right now. Oh well, here's the results anyways...
I tested 294 pairs of combatants. Every pair had an elf with no skills, average attributes, random personality traits, and no equipment. Each elf was paired with an enemy dwarf with average attributes and random personality traits. Half of the dwarves had a copper gauntlet equipped, and half of them had no gauntlets equipped. Every dwarf was a grand master striker.
Each pair of combatants was placed in a 2X1 room completely isolated from the other pairs. They fought to the death.
The results:
Of the copper gauntlets group, 34 of the elves emerged victorious. Of the no gauntlets group, 29 elves emerged victorious.
conclusion:
Offhand, the gauntlets didn't seem to make much of a difference. In an unarmed fight, a little hand armor wasn't likely to make much difference in survivability, so it is safe to count that out as a significant factor. And if the gauntlets had an effect on the damage of the punching attacks, it would make the punches stronger because of the added weight and strength of the material. The results, however, show more elves survived against the dwarves with the gauntlets than those without, further supporting the idea that the gauntlets did not help the dwarves. The difference in surviving elves was probably just random, and further testing would even out the data a little bit.
Feel free to do more testing on the subject.