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Harvard economic historian Claudia Goldin won the 2023 Nobel economics prize for her work exposing the causes of deeply rooted wage and labour market inequality between men and women, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said on Monday.<\/p>\n
The prestigious award, formally known as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, is the last of this year\u2019s crop of Nobel prizes and is worth 11 million Swedish crowns, or nearly $1 million.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis year\u2019s Laureate in the Economic Sciences, Claudia Goldin, provided the first comprehensive account of women\u2019s earnings and labour market participation through the centuries,\u201d the prize-giving body said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cHer research reveals the causes of change, as well as the main sources of the remaining gender gap.\u201d<\/p>\n
The award for economics is the final instalment of this year\u2019s crop of Nobels that have seen prizes go to COVID-19 vaccine discoveries<\/a>, atomic snapshots<\/a> and \u201cquantum dots<\/a>\u201d as well as to a Norwegian dramatist and an Iranian activist.<\/p>\n Goldin, who in 1990 became the first woman to be tenured at Harvard\u2019s economics department, is only the third woman to win the Nobel economics prize \u2014 and the first to win it by herself rather than sharing it.<\/p>\n She hailed the decision as \u201can award for big ideas and for long-term change\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are still large differences between women and men in terms of what they do, how they\u2019re remunerated and so on,\u201d Goldin told Reuters<\/em> at her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd the question is, why is this the case? And that\u2019s what the work is about,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Goldin\u2019s 1990 book \u201cUnderstanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women\u201d was a hugely influential examination of the roots of wage inequality over 200 years of history.<\/p>\n \u201cI have always thought of myself as a detective and I wrote many years ago \u2026 a piece called \u2018the economist as a detective\u2019,\u201d she said in a recording posted on the Nobel website.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been a detective since I was a little kid,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n She has followed up with studies on the impact of the contraceptive pill on women\u2019s career and marriage decisions, women\u2019s surnames after marriage as a social indicator and the reasons why women are now the majority of undergraduates.<\/p>\n \u201cClaudia Goldin\u2019s discoveries have vast societal implications,\u201d said Randi Hjalmarsson, member of the Economic Prize committee.<\/p>\n \u201cShe has shown us that the nature of this problem or the source of this underlying gender gap changes throughout history and with the course of development,\u201d Hjalmarsson said.<\/p>\n Hjalmarsson quoted Goldin\u2019s own words: \u201cBy finally understanding the problem and calling it by the right name, we will be able to pave a better route forward.\u201d<\/p>\n Goldin\u2019s \u201cdedication to improving economic equality is an inspiration to us all\u201d, ECB President Christine Lagarde said on social media platform X.<\/p>\n While it is illegal across much of the world for employers to discriminate based on gender, women still face significant shortfalls in pay compared to men.<\/p>\n Both lose<\/h2>\n