Harvard professor Claudia Goldin was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics this morning for her research on women at work. She became the third woman in history to win the prize after Elinor Ostrom in 2009 and Esther Duflo in 2019.
The awarding committee gave Goldin the prize “for having advanced our understanding of women’s labor market outcomes.” Goldin analyzed over 200 years of data from U.S. labor, and her research busted some myths about the gender pay gap and women’s participation in the labor force.
In the U.S., women currently make about 82 cents for every dollar a man earns. Historically, Goldin found that differences in education and occupational choices could explain this gender gap in earnings. More recently, Goldin found that the bulk of the current earnings difference is between men and women in the same occupation. That is, when women and men hold the same job, men get paid more. Therefore, education and occupational choice cannot be totally to blame.
Instead, her research suggests that the earnings difference can be blamed, at least partially, on motherhood. In one study of MBA students, Goldin and a fellow researcher found that men far outearn their female counterparts a decade after they graduate from business school. The disparities in income were predominantly tied to women’s career interruptions and a reduction in weekly work hours linked to the birth of a child.
Even when mothers who previously reduced their hours transition to full-time work, they have trouble catching up to the men. Goldin explains this phenomenon in a research paper that compares a parent’s life to a hike: “Parenthood is part of the steep climb during which mothers slow down, reduce their hours of work, and occasionally leave employment for some time or shift into less time-intensive jobs and firms. But there is a moment when childcare demands greatly lessen, and women can increase their hours of paid work and assume greater career challenges. We can think of that moment metaphorically, as when mothers reach a summit and then run down the other side of the mountain. But even though they increase their hours of work, they never reach the rich valley of gender equality. “
Goldin does not have children, lending anecdotal support for her theory that child-rearing may be keeping some women from reaching the top levels of their fields.
Given the impact of childbirth on women’s career trajectories, it’s not surprising that Goldin also established research evidence for the “power of the pill” in helping women advance at work. She found persuasive evidence that the availability of the contraceptive pill was related to an increase in the age that women married and an increase in women in professional degree programs.
Goldin’s research also suggests that sex bias plays a role in the gender pay gap. For example, one of her most fascinating studies shed light on how symphony orchestras saw a significant reduction in gender bias when they implemented blind auditions. Using data from actual auditions, she and her coauthor found that using a screen to conceal the musician’s identity resulted in the hiring of more women.
However, Goldin is best known for her historical perspective on women’s advancement. “It was not that long ago that women were fired or demoted for being married, getting married, being pregnant, having children or capable of having children, were denied credit and mortgages, had to use their husband’s name on credit cards, were treated differently than identical men by the IRS, the Social Security system, and the retirement rules of the federal government and the military, had jobs that were advertised separately from those of men, had restrictions on their work hours and the types of jobs they could take,” she wrote in a working paper posted to NBER this month.
In the same paper, Goldin points to the splintering of the women’s movement in the 1970s as an obstacle to women’s advancement. A substantial group of women emerged in the 1970s to oppose various rights for women. These women likely didn’t oppose gender equality in pay. Still, they had concerns that equality would result in single-sex bathrooms, force women to take combat positions, end alimony and support for dependent children, and compel women into the workforce. She says the modern version of this anti-feminist movement remains a “potent force” and has joined with those opposed to abortion, gay marriage and transgender rights.
Goldin’s journey through academia likely gave her a front-row seat to the challenges women encounter in the workplace. In 1990, she shattered the glass ceiling by becoming the first woman to gain tenure within Harvard’s economics department. During her time at the university, a Harvard president, Larry Summers, suggested that innate gender differences could account for the underrepresentation of women in science and math careers. Even today, economics remains a heavily male-dominated field. Currently, only seven of the 51 economics faculty members at Harvard are women.
Goldin’s Nobel win represents a dual triumph for women. Not only did she win for excelling in the predominantly male domain of economics, but she also received the award for her groundbreaking research on women’s progress in the workplace. Women’s issues seemed to be a theme for the Nobel Prize winners this year. In addition to Goldin, human rights activist Narges Mohammadi won the Nobel Peace Prize this year “for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all.”
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