9 October, Stockholm, Sweden (ANI): Claudia Goldin, an economist and labour historian from the United States, was awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Economics for her research on pay disparities between men and women, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said on Monday.
Claudia Goldin, 77, received the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2023 “for having advanced our understanding of women’s labour market outcomes,” the award-giving organisation stated in a statement.
As the lone recipient of this year’s award, Goldin will earn 11 million Swedish kronor, or around $1 million.
Only the third woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Economics, Goldin was born in 1946 and is presently a professor of economics at Harvard University. Previous female winners include Esther Duflo in 2019 and Elinor Ostrom in 2009. When Duflo received her prize in 2019, she was 46 years old.
Goldin was “surprised and very, very glad” to learn she had won, according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
The awarding organisation claims that Goldin identified important factors that contribute to gender disparities in the work market.
It added that her study has provided us with fresh, often unexpected perspectives on the historical and modern responsibilities of women in the workforce.
In many high-income nations, the percentage of women working for pay has quadrupled over the past century. Even though this is one of the largest sociological and economic developments in the history of the labour market, there are still considerable gender inequalities.
“Goldin has been able to offer fresh and often startling findings by scouring the archives and collating and revising historical data. Her analyses and explanatory models are based on the idea that marriage and parental responsibilities have often constrained women’s options and still do.
There are numerous nations throughout the world where comparable trends have been seen, demonstrating how far-reaching Goldin’s views are.
“Her research brings us a better understanding of the labour markets of yesterday, today, and tomorrow,” added the statement.
In order to show how and why gender gaps in incomes and employment rates have evolved over time, Goldin gathered data from the US over more than 200 years.
She demonstrated that there was a U-shaped curve rather than an increasing trend in female labour market involvement throughout the course of this time. The participation of married women decreased with the transition from an agrarian to an industrial society in the early nineteenth century, but then started to increase with the growth of the service sector in the early twentieth century.
As a consequence of structural change and changing societal norms about women’s domestic and family obligations, according to Goldin, this pattern has emerged.
Women’s educational levels have been steadily rising during the 20th century, and in the majority of high-income nations, they are currently far higher than those of males. By providing new chances for career planning, Goldin showed how accessibility to the contraceptive pill played a significant role in driving this revolutionary development.
Historically, disparities in educational attainment and career preferences might account for a large portion of the gender pay disparity. However, this year’s economic sciences laureate, Claudia Goldin, has shown that the bulk of this earnings difference is now between men and women in the same occupation and that it largely arises with the birth of the first child.
Despite modernization, economic expansion, and increased employment rates for women in the 20th century, the wage gap between men and women remained stubbornly wide for a protracted period of time.
Claudia Goldin, the winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in economic sciences, claims that part of the reason is that people make choices about their schooling early on, which might affect their professional options for the rest of their lives. Development will be delayed if young women’s expectations are shaped by the experiences of past generations, such as their mothers’ decisions to wait to return to the workforce until their children have grown up.
“It is crucial for society that we understand women’s place in the work force. Thanks to Claudia Goldin’s groundbreaking research, we now know much more about the underlying factors and which barriers may need to be addressed in the future,” according to Jakob Svensson, Chair of the Committee for Prizes in Economic Sciences.
Goldin’s accomplishment was praised as “fantastic” by Jason Furman, a former senior economic advisor to President Barack Obama.
“Fantastic! a trailblazing academic who has changed my perspective on inequality, women in the workforce, and many other topics. A generous mentor to generations of students,” he tweeted.
He also posted that he had reviewed her book “Career and Family,” which explained how the gender pay gap was due to institutional hurdles rather than discrimination and how having a child has a significant, negative impact on a woman’s earnings. (ANI)
