Claudia Goldin, Nobel Prize in Economics 2023 for her pioneering studies on the wage gap in women

Goldein has shown that female participation in the labor market did not trend upward over a 200-year period, but instead forms a U-shaped curve.

The participation of married women decreased during the transition from an agrarian to an industrial society at the beginning of the 19th century, but then began to increase in parallel with the development of the service sector at the beginning of the last century. Goldin explains this pattern as "the result of structural change and evolving social norms regarding the responsibilities attributed to women in the home and family based on history and culture."

Claudia Goldin "reviewed existing archives, compiled and analyzed relevant historical data that have been able to establish new and often surprising conclusions," the Nobel Committee notes in a statement.

"Her work has given us a deeper understanding of the factors that affect women's opportunities in the labor market and the demand for female labor." The teacher celebrates the recognition on X, formerly Twitter, pointing out that she "always wanted to be a detective, and I finally got it."

"It is a fact that women's decisions have often been, and continue to be, limited by marriage and domestic responsibilities," the Committee continues, "and the family is at the center of their analyzes and explanatory models. The studies Goldin's studies have also taught us that change takes time, because decisions that affect women's entire careers are often constrained by false expectations.

"Despite modernization, economic growth and the increase in the proportion of women employed in the 20th century, for a long period of time the wage gap between women and men has barely closed," she explains. "This is partly because educational decisions, which impact a lifetime of career opportunities, are decided and directed at a relatively early age."

"And if young women's expectations are still shaped by the experiences of previous generations (for example, their mothers, who have seen them stop working and not return to work until their children are older), it will impact their careers and social and labor change will be slower.

"Throughout the 20th century, women's education levels have increased considerably and in most high-income countries they are now substantially higher than men's. Goldin demonstrated with her studies that, in this context, access to The contraceptive pill in the last two or three decades of the last century played a crucial role in accelerating this revolutionary change, as it offered new opportunities for family and professional planning," continues the organization, based in Oslo.

"His ideas reach far beyond the borders of the United States: similar patterns have been observed in many other countries. His research gives us a better understanding of the labor markets of yesterday, today and tomorrow."

Goldin has received numerous awards, including the Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Economics category, awarded by the BBVA Foundation in 2019.

The Nobel Prize in economics is the last of the awards that remained to be awarded this year after those for Peace, Literature, Chemistry, Physics and Medicine, among others.

Americans Ben Bernanke, Douglas Diamond and Philip Dybvig were awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2022 last year for their studies on the role of banking and regulation in overcoming financial crises.

The Nobel Prize in Economics, like the rest, is endowed this year with 11 million Swedish crowns (almost a million dollars). The awards will be presented on December 10 in the traditional double ceremony in Oslo, for the Nobel Peace Prize, and in Stockholm, for the remaining five. The Nobel Prize in Economics is the only one of the six prizes not created by the Swedish magnate Alfred Nobel, but was established by the National Bank of Sweden (Riksbank) in 1968 and was awarded for the first time the following year.

In the 54 occasions on which it has been awarded - it has never been void, unlike the other five - it has distinguished 92 people, only two of them women: the American Elinor Ostrom (2009) and the French Esther Duflo (2019). It is, along with Physics, the only one that does not have winners from Spain or Latin America in its list of winners.