CAudia Goldin was the first woman to obtain the professorship in 1990 Economy at theHarvard Universityco-director of Gender in the Economy Study Group of Nber (the National Bureau of Economic Research) as well as program director Development of the American Economy by Nber from 1989 to 2017.
To make the high professional profile of Claudia Goldin, American economist, born in New York in 1946 to a Jewish family and PhD at the University of Chicago with supervisor Gary Becker (in turn, Nobel Prize winner in 1992), she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics.
The reasons for the Nobel Prize for Economics
The recognition was awarded to her “for advancing our understanding of women’s labor market outcomes.”
Nobel Economy to Claudia Goldin for studies on the Gender Gap. ANSA/Harvard University
Goldin, in fact, through his studies on the gender gap, discovered the key drivers of gender differences in the labor marketproviding the first comprehensive account of women’s wages and labor market participation over the centuries.
Women who – as stated in the motivation of the Royal Swedish Academy – «are widely underrepresented in the global labor market and, when they work, earn less than men.”
Studies on the pay gap between women and men
Goldin’s research, also contained in his latest book Career & Family: Women’s Century-Long Journey into Equity (published in 2021 by Princeton University Press) – in which she also focuses on the impact of the pandemic on women’s careers – attests how, despite modernization, «economic growth and the growing percentage of employed women in the twentieth century, the pay gap between women and men has not yet closed».
The emancipation of women
Women’s education levels are constantly growingto the point that – again according to the studies of the new Nobel Prize winner for Economics – in most high-income countries, they are now substantially higher than those of men.
Furthermore, the economist demonstrated how laccess to the contraceptive pill has played an important role in accelerating this revolutionary change, offering new career planning opportunities.
«Thanks to Claudia Goldin’s groundbreaking research, we now know much more about the underlying factors and barriers that could be addressed in the future,” he said Jakob Svenssonpresident of the Committee for the Prize in Economic Sciences.
Third woman to win the Nobel Prize in Economics
The gender gap can also be found in the Nobel Prize for Economics, the only one not established by Alfred Nobelbut from National Bank of Sweden (Riksbank), in 1968. Goldin, in fact, is only the third woman to win this recognitionafter the American Elinor Ostrom (2009) and the French Esther Duflo (2019).
The “glass ceiling” to be broken
The Nobel awarded to the economist who she dedicated her entire life to the issue of women’s work and the consequent inequalities, however, with the awareness of his studies, it can represent an opportunity for contribute to breaking the “glass ceiling” on gender equalityin every working and social context.
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