Claudia Goldin wins Nobel Prize in Economics for study on the gender gap at work

Claudia Goldin, a professor at Harvard University, won the Nobel of Economics for her studies on the gender gap in the labor market.

The announcement was also a tiny step toward closing the award’s gender gap. Goldin is only the third woman among the 93 winners in the Economics category.

The expert has analyzed 200 years of women’s participation in the labor market, which show that despite continued economic growth, women’s incomes have not caught up with men’s incomes and the difference still persists, despite the fact that Women have achieved higher levels of education than men.

“Understanding the role of women in the labor market is important for society. Thanks to Claudia Goldin’s pioneering research, we now know much more about the underlying factors and what barriers may need to be addressed in the future.”he explained Jakob Svenssonpresident of the Economic Sciences Prize Committee.

Goldin doesn’t offer solutions, but his research allows lawmakers to address the deep-seated problem, he said. Randi Hjalmarssonmember of the award committee.

“She explains the origin of the gap, how it has changed over time, and how it varies with the development phase. And therefore, there is no single measure“, said Hjalmarsson. ““It is a complicated political issue because if you do not know the underlying reason, a specific measure does not work.”

However, “By finally understanding the problem and calling it by its proper name, we will be able to carve a better path to the future,” said Hjalmarsson, who added that Goldin’s discoveries have “enormous social implications”.

Goldin had to do some detective work to find the data needed for his investigation, Hjalmarsson said. During some periods, systematic labor market statistics were not recorded, and when they existed, information on women was lacking.

“So how did Claudia Goldin overcome this missing data challenge? She had to play detective to search through the archives and find new sources of data and creative ways to use them to measure these unknowns.“explained the academic.

According to Goldin’s analysis, a woman’s role in the labor market and the salary she receives do not depend only on general economic and social changes. They are also determined in part by her specific decisions about, for example, how much education to receive.

Girls often make decisions about their future work based on their mothers’ situation, and each generation “learn from the successes and failures of the previous generation”Hjalmarsson indicated.

The process of evaluating possibilities as times change “helps explain why change in gender gaps in the labor market has been so slow“, he pointed.

Goldin, 77, was “surprised and very, very happy” upon learning that she had been awarded, said Hans Ellegren, secretary general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which announced the prize in Stockholm.

The statement followed the awards for medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace, which were announced last week.

The award was established in 1968 by the Swedish central bank and is officially known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.

Last year’s winners were former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Douglas W. Diamond and Philip Dybvig for their research into bank failures that helped shape the aggressive U.S. response to the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008.

Source: AP