The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on Monday that Harvard economic historian Claudia Goldin has been awarded the 2023 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for her work illuminating the core causes of persistent pay and labour market discrimination against women.
Nobel economics prize: The final of this year’s Nobel prizes, the coveted honour is officially known as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel and is valued 11 million Swedish crowns, or just under $1 million. The organisation that awards the prizes stated in a statement that this year’s economic sciences laureate, Claudia Goldin, “provided the first comprehensive account of women’s earnings and labour market participation through the centuries.”
“Her research reveals the main drivers of the remaining gender gap as well as the causes of change.”
The prize for economics is the last of this year’s Nobel Prizes, which have already included honours for the COVID-19 vaccine, atomic pictures, “quantum dots,” a Norwegian playwright, and an Iranian activist.
Only three women have ever won the Nobel Prize in economics, and Goldin is the first to do so solely rather than in collaboration with another person. She was the first woman to receive tenure in Harvard’s economics department at 1990.
She praised the choice as “an award for big ideas and for long-term change”.
Goldin, speaking from her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, told Reuters that women and men still work and are compensate quite differently.
“And so, why is this the case, you ask? And it is the subject of the work.
The analysis of the causes of pay inequality across 200 years of history in Goldin’s 1990 book “Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women” had a significant impact on subsequent research.
“Claudia Goldin: Uncovering Societal Implications Through Economic Research”
In a tape broadcast on the Nobel website, she stated, “I have always considered myself a detective and published an article many years ago titled ‘the economist as a detective.'” Since I was a young child, I have worked as a detective.
She has since published studies on topics such as the influence of the contraceptive pill on women’s career and marital decisions, the social significance of women’s surnames after marriage, and the reasons why women currently make up the majority of undergraduate students.
Randi Hjalmarsson, a member of the Economic Prize committee, stated that Claudia Goldin’s discoveries “have significant societal implications.” “She has demonstrated to us that the nature of this issue or the underlying cause of this gender gap changes over the course of history and development.”
Hjalmarsson cited Goldin as saying, “By finally understanding the problem and calling it by the right name, we will be able to pave a better route forward.” According to Christine Lagarde, president of the ECB, Goldin’s “dedication to improving economic equality is an inspiration to us all,” she stated on social media site X.
The phrase “BOTH LOSE”
Employers generally prohibit discrimination based on gender, yet women still receive much lower pay than men.
According to a Pew Research Centre analysis, women in the United States earned 82% of what males did last year. Women in Europe made 13% less per hour on average than men in 2021, according to data from the European Commission.
While the difference has narrowed over the past few decades, according to Goldin’s research, there is little sign that it will completely close any time soon.
She has blamed everything from overt discrimination to “greedy work,” a term she coined to describe jobs that pay disproportionately more per hour when someone works longer or has less control over those hours, effectively punishing women who need to find flexible work.
Gita Gopinath, First Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, praised Goldin’s “pathbreaking work” and also pointed out that the labor market participation rate for women is “abysmally low in many countries.”
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