The 2023 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded on Monday to the American Claudia Goldin for her work on developing the position of women in the labor market and their income.
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The favorite for this prize, Claudia Goldin, 77, was rewarded for “expanding our understanding of the situation of women in the labor market,” said the Nobel jury.
The labor and economic history specialist is the first woman appointed to head Harvard University’s economics department and only the third woman to be honored since the economics prize was established.
Previously only the American Elinor Ostrom (2009) and the French-American Esther Duflo (2019) had won it.
“Claudia Goldin’s research has given us new and often surprising insights into the historical and current role of women in the labor market,” said the jury.
As a specialist in economic history, she “highlighted the main factors behind the differences between men and women” and how they have developed over the last two centuries as industrialization progressed, with a decline in women’s employment in the 19th century, according to the Press Release jury.
Various elements play a role: the type of income, domestic constraints and women’s expectations.
“These elements have changed from generation to generation,” emphasized the Nobel Committee.
For a long time, young women did not expect to have a career, and only recently have they integrated the possibility of a long and active career.
“In recent decades, more and more women have studied and generally have higher levels of education than men in high-income countries,” the jury said.
Globally, about 50% of women are employed, compared to 80% of men, and women earn less and are “less likely to reach the top of the career ladder” and face a “glass ceiling,” noted Randi Hjalmarsson, a member of the Nobel Committee.
To reach her conclusions, Claudia Goldin performed unprecedented meticulous work.
She delved into archives and collected more than 200 years of data about the United States to show how and why the income and employment gaps between men and women have changed over time — work that predated the advent of computers and the Internet was carried out.
While in the past much of the income gap could be explained by differences in education and career choice, Ms. Goldin showed “that the bulk of this income gap now exists between men and women who work the same job, and that it largely occurs.” Birth of the first child.
His work also showed that “access to the birth control pill” played an important role in accelerating the rise in educational attainment in the 20th century by “providing new opportunities for career planning,” according to the Nobel Committee.
Last year the award went to Ben Bernanke, the former president of the US Federal Reserve (Fed), and his compatriots Douglas Diamond and Philip Dybvig for their work at banks and their necessary rescues during financial storms.
The only one not included in Alfred Nobel’s will, the Economics Prize was added much later to the five traditional prizes “in memory” of the inventor, earning him the nickname “false Nobel Prize” among his critics.
In 1968, to mark its tercentenary, the Central Bank of Sweden (Riksbank), the oldest in the world, established a prize in economics in memory of Alfred Nobel by providing the Nobel Foundation annually with an amount equal to that of the other prizes.
The most prestigious Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on Friday to imprisoned Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi.
The Norwegian Jon Fosse had previously received an award in literature. The chemistry prize was awarded to Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus and Alexei Ekimov for their work on nanoparticles, so-called quantum dots.
In physics, three specialists in the movement of electrons, Anne L’Huillier, Pierre Agostini and Ferenc Krausz, were awarded the prize, while in medicine a duo, Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman, were awarded for their advances in the messenger RNA vaccine.