Harvard University professor Claudia Goldin wins Nobel economics prize

A trailblazing Harvard professor has won the Nobel Prize for economics for her research on the women’s labor market.

Claudia Goldin was awarded the economics prize Monday – for a body of work that seeks to explain why women are less likely than men to secure employment and will likely earn less when they do.   

She is the third woman to win the top economics prize.  

Fittingly, the announcement marked a small step toward closing a gender gap among Nobel laureates in the prize’s economic category – with American Elinor Ostrom earning a win in 2009, and Esther Duflo doing so a decade later. 

Born in New York just after , Godin is a product of the advancements seen since – and appeared over the moon when she got the phone call at the Cambridge, , home she shares with her husband and dog revealing her win.

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Some 5,000 miles away in Sweden, officials from The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences – the committee awarding the prize – hailed the 77-year-old for ‘[providing] the first comprehensive account of women’s earnings and labor market outcomes throughout the centuries’.

Randi Hjalmarsson, a member of the  committee, added how the Harvard historian ‘had to be a detective,’ after analyzing more than 200 years of US data to demonstrate that much of the gender pay gap could be explained historically.

Stemming mostly from differences in education and occupation, the disparity was laid bare in a body of work that spanned decades – and centered around topics such as the evolution of women’s workforce and its implications for future job markets.

However, thanks to sprawling studies that helped her become the first female at her school to secure tenure, Goldin also shined a light on other lesser-known sources of earnings difference – such as the birth of a woman’s first child.

During a 15-year study of business school students conducted by Godin in 2010 at the University of Chicago, she found evidence the gap in pay between men and women started to widen a year or two after the woman had her first baby.

Upon announcing the award winner in Stockholm Monday, Hjalmarsson cited such discoveries as the driving force behind his and other committee members’ decisions – along with the ‘vast societal implications’ of her findings.

Those discoveries sought to provide answers to long looming questions like why only half the world’s nearly 4billion women have paid jobs, in contrast to 80 percent of men. 

Economists have historically regarded the gap’s existence as a result of jobs failing give qualified women a chance, or because they either weren’t competing for work or were not being considered properly.

Goldin, however, sought to find the reasons behind such disparities – and kampus terbaik di jakarta often found they resulted from decisions that women made about their prospects in the job market and about their families’ personal circumstances. 

Some women underestimated their employment opportunities, she found, while Others felt overwhelmed by responsibilities at home.

‘Women are now more educated than men,’ Goldin noted in an interview Monday, shortly before arriving at Harvard after winning the award to give a speech in front of members of the press and faculty.

‘They graduate from college at much higher rates than men. They do better in high school than men do.So why are there these differences?’ she asked rhetorically,

‘We realize that these differences, although some are found within the labor market, are really reflections of what happens within individuals’ homes.

She further added, after learning she was the first woman to be the prize’s sole winner in any year: ‘And they’re an interaction between what happens in the home and what happens in the labor market.’

In an interview with the New York Times shortly after her win, She revealed she was asleep when the call informing her of the prize came in, stating that she had gotten up earlier to let her Golden Retriever Pika out, but had gone back to bed. 

She told the paper that she was ‘delighted’ with the news. 

‘We see a residue of history around us,’ she said, attempting to explain some of the sentiments seen in her work. 

‘We’re never going to have gender equality until we also have couple equity,’ she added, citing dynamics present in relationships that affects discrepancies in pay.

Conceding that there has been ‘monumental progressive change’ even since she joined Harvard back in 1990, she added that ‘at the same time, there are important differences’ that often can be explained by women doing more work in the home.   

Moreover, a persistent pay gap that sees women in advanced economies earn, on average, about 13 percent less than men, further discourages women from pursuing jobs or continuing their education to qualify for more advanced gigs, fueling the disparity.

Goldin compiled new databases using resources like industrial statistics and historical surveys on how people used their time to find these and other answers, which Nobel officials on Monday praised ‘for having advanced our understanding of women’s labor market outcomes.’

Her award follows Nobel honors this year in medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace that were announced last week. 

It also follows last year’s three winners in economics: Former Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke, Douglas W.Diamond and Philip Dybvig for their research into bank failures that helped shape America´s aggressive response to the 2007 financial crisis.