Economics Nobel to Claudia Goldin for shedding light on gender pay gap

 Economics Nobel to Claudia Goldin for shedding light on gender pay gap

Goldin (77), who in 1990 became the first woman to be tenured at Harvard's economics department, is only the third woman to win the prize, and the first to win it solo rather than sharing it

Hails Prize But Says Women Still Face Huge Inequalities At Work

According to Media thru NYT sources,

The Nobel Memorial Prize  In Economic Sciences was awarded on Monday to Claudia Goldin, a Harvard professor for advancing the world's understanding of wo- men's progress in the workforce, Goldin is the third woman to have won the economics Nobel, which was first awarded in 1969, and the first one to be ho- noured with it solo rather than sharing in the prize. Goldin, 77, is the Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard University. She has long been atrailblazer in the field-she was the first woman to be offered tenure in Harvard's economics department, in 1989.

Goldin saw a woman win ning the economics award on her own as a sort of "culmina- tion" after years of "important changes" toward more gender diversity in the field. She hai led the decision as "an award for big ideas and for long term change". But added, "there are still large differences between women and men in terms of what they do, how they're remunerated and so on."

Goldin's 1990 book "Under- standing the Gender Gap: An Economic History of Ameri- can Women" was a hugely influential examination of the roots of wage inequality. She has followed up with studies on the impact of the contraceptive pill on women's career and marriage decisions, women's surnames after marriage as a social indicator and the rea sons why women are now the majority of undergraduates.

The Nobel committee praised Goldin for her research in to female employment, which showed that employment among married women decreased in the 1800s, as the econo my moved away from agricultural and toward industry Women's participation then increased in the 1900s, as the service sector began to expand as a part of the economy She also illustrated that the process of closing the gender wage gap has been uneven over the cour se of history Recently progress in closing it has been halting: Today women in the US make a little over 80 cents for eve ry dollar a man makes. In the past, gender wage gaps could be explained by education and own that most of the earnings difference is now between men and women in the same jobs, the Nobel committee said. Notably, it kicks in after the birth of a woman's first child.

Goldin has attributed the gap to factors ranging from outright discrimination to phenomena such as "greedy work", a term she coined for jobs that pay disproportionately more per hour when someone works longer or has less cont rol over those hours  effectively penalising women who need to seek flexible labour.

Goldin said she hoped people would take away from her work how important long-term changes are to understanding the labour market. "We see a residue of history around us," she said, explaining that societal and family structures that women and men grow up in shape their behaviour and economic outcomes. While there has been "monumental progressive change, at the same time there are important diffe rences," she said, and those differences often tie back to wom en doing more work at home. "We're never going to have gender equality until we also have couple equity" As per the NYT media sources.