The Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel, sometimes called the “Nobel in Economics”, was awarded on Monday October 9, to the American Claudia Goldin for her work on gender inequalities in the labor market. Her research focuses on topics such as the female workforce, income inequality, education, and gender pay inequality.
Professor at Harvard and specialist in labor and economic history, she is the third woman since the creation of the economics prize to be rewarded.
Until now, only the American Elinor Ostrom (2009) and the Franco-American Esther Duflo (2019) had won it.
“She discovered the main factors explaining gender differences in the labor market”according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Specialist in economic history, “it highlighted the main factors of differences between men and women” and how they have evolved over the last two centuries as industrialization progressed with a decline in women’s work during the 19th century.e century, according to the jury’s press release.
“His research reveals the causes of change, as well as the main sources of the remaining gap between men and women. » Thus, she showed that “Women are largely underrepresented in the global labor market and, when they work, they earn less than men”.
Globally, around 50% of women participate in the workforce, compared to 80% of men, and women earn less and “are less likely to reach the top of the professional ladder”colliding with the ” glass ceiling “noted Randi Hjalmarsson, member of the Nobel committee.
Birth of the first child
The winner demonstrated that women’s participation in the labor market has not experienced an upward trend over the past two hundred years in the United States, but rather followed a U-shaped curve.
During the 20the century, the educational level of women has continued to increase and, in most high-income countries, is now significantly higher than that of men. Claudia Goldin demonstrated that access to the contraceptive pill played an important role in accelerating this change, providing new career opportunities for women in terms of education and professional choices.
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Historically, much of the gender pay gap in the United States could be explained by differences in education and career choices. But, according to his work, most of this difference in income today is between women and men exercising the same profession, and largely occurs at the birth of the first child.
Like the other Nobels, the prize is endowed with 10 million Swedish crowns (920,000 euros), to be shared among co-winners. Created by the Bank of Sweden, the Economy Prize “in memory of Alfred Nobel” was added in 1969 to the five traditional prizes (medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace) more than sixty years after the others, earning it from its detractors the nickname of “false Nobel”.
More information to come.