Economics Nobel winner highlights gender gap

Claudia Goldin is a Harvard economic historian who wrote a path-breaking study on the pay differences between women and men in the 200 years of American history, and reasons for the inequality. Her 1990 book is titled “Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women.” The work’s importance lies in the fact that she showed how the terms of inequality changed though complete equality remains a goal. She showed that the contraceptive pill and women retaining their maiden names were some of the markers that indicated change in women’s bargaining power. As economic development took place, there were changes in gender gap too, which improved the position of women. It was for this contribution that the Royal Swedish Academy chose her for the 2023 Nobel Prize for Economics. The award is also known as Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Memory of Alfred Nobel.

The academy said, “This year’s Laureate in the Economic Sciences, Claudia Goldin, provided the first comprehensive account of women’s earnings and labour market participation through the centuries. Her research reveals the causes of change, as well as the main sources of the remaining gender gap.” Goldin acknowledged the award as a win for “big ideas and long term change.” She has however noted, “There are still large differences between women and men in terms of what they do, how they are remunerated and so on. And the question is why this is the case? And that’s what the work is about.”

Randi Hjalmarsson, member of the Economics Prize Committee said, “Claudia Goldin’s discoveries have vast social implications. She has shown us the nature of this problem or the source of this underlying gender gap changes throughout history and with the course of development.”

This is the first time that a feminist perspective of economic history has been recognised as a way to uncover facts like differences in salaries between women and men in American history which moved from slave-owned agriculture to industrial development and to the post-industrial stage of the service sector dominating the economy. And in all these stages, the pay difference between women and men remained, though the gap was lessened. According to Pew Research Centre analysis, women in America in 2022 earned 82 per cent of what men were paid. That is, they were paid 18 per cent less than men. In Europe, women were paid 13 per cent less than men in 2021 according to European Commission data.

Most Western experts have been talking as to how it is necessary for greater women’s participation in the workforce for increase growth of the economy in the developing economies, while remaining silent on the glaring gender gap in pay in the Western economies. The Nobel for Economics for 2023 is an acceptance of the injustice of inequality in pay between women and men in advanced economies. It reveals that social prejudices remain despite progress in economy though the prejudices are watered down quite a bit. There is reduction in the pay gap between women and women in Western countries, but the gap remains. And the gap is rooted in age-old deep prejudice that women are not equal to men.

Women have been voicing the demand for pay parity between women and men. The demand has grown in professional tennis and among film actresses in many parts of the world. The gap in remuneration between women and men is sharper in rural work, among agricultural labour and construction workers in developing economies. Claudia Goldin’s work about gender gap in remuneration in America is a radical step in recognising that the problem is universal and that it is not peculiar to developing economies in Asia and Africa. It exists in the heart of the developed economies of the West. And there is need for a worldwide battle against pay inequality between women and men.