Explained | What were Claudia Goldin’s observations about female participation in the labour force which earned her the Nobel Prize?
The Hindu
Harvard Prof. Goldin wins Nobel Prize in Economics for her research on gender differences in labour market participation. She found that female participation decreased with industrialisation, but increased again with the growth of the services sector. Factors such as marriage bars, expectations, and birth control pills have all influenced the supply and demand for female labour. Her research showed that both men and women are deprived when gender differences persist in the labour market.
The story so far:
On Monday, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences for 2023 was being awarded to Harvard University Professor Claudia Goldin for “having advanced our understanding of women’s labour market outcomes”. Her work, it said, is the “first comprehensive account of women’s earning and labour market participation through the centuries”. Professor Goldin is only the third women to have won the prize (for Economics) and the first to do it solo.
Professor Goldin trawled through the archives of about 200 years of the United States to demonstrate how and why gender differences in earnings and employment rates have changed over time. The most significant of her observations was that female participation in the labour market did not exhibit an upward trend over the entire period, but rather a U-shaped curve. In other words, economic growth ensuing in varied periods did not translate to reducing gender differences in the labour market. She demonstrated that several factors have historically influenced and still influence the supply and demand for female labour. These include opportunities for combining paid work and a family, decisions (and expectations) related to pursuing education and raising children, technical innovations, laws and norms, and the structural transformation in an economy.
According to her, the most important in the unequal paradigm “is that both lose”. She told Social Science Bites blog earlier in December, “Men are able to have the family and step up because women step back in terms of their jobs, but both are deprived. Men forgo time with their family and women often forgo their career”.
The participation of married women decreased with the transition from an agrarian to an industrialised society in the early nineteenth century. It started to increase again with the growth of the services sector in the early nineteenth century. The first of Professor Goldin’s observations was about how female participation in labour force was incorrectly assessed and thereby, (incorrectly) stated in Censuses and public data. For example, a standard practice entailed categorising women’s occupation as “wife” in records. This was incorrect because the identification did not account for activities other than domestic labour such as working alongside husbands in farms or family businesses, in cottage industries or production setups at home, such as with textiles or dairy goods.
According to Professor Goldin, correcting the data about female participation established that the proportion of women in the labour force was considerably greater at the end of the 1890s than was shown in the official statistics. They enumerate that the employment rate for married women was three times greater than the registered Census.
She also observed that prior to the advent of industrialisation in the nineteenth century, women were more likely to participate in the labour force. This was because industrialisation had made it harder for married women to work from home since they would not be able to balance the demands of their family. Even though her research held that unmarried women were employed in manufacturing during the industrial era, the overall female force had declined.
Flight AI177 will depart Bengaluru at 1.05 p.m. and arrive at London Gatwick at 7.05 p.m. (local time). From London Gatwick, flight AI178 will depart at 8.35 p.m. (local time) and arrive in Bengaluru at 10.50 a.m. (next day arrival). From Bengaluru, the flight will operate on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays.