“Claudia Goldin has put gender back at the centre of economics,” explains Roland Rathelot, Professor of Economics at ENSAE (IP Paris). Before her, analyses of labour economics generally excluded women, who were more affected by career breaks and part-time work. In 1990, the American economist became the first woman to join the economics department at Harvard University, where she still teaches today. Claudia Goldin was one of the first researchers to take a specific interest in the role of women in the labour market and the particularities of female employment. In October 2023, her work earned her the Nobel Prize in Economics. “Claudia Goldin was the first to assert that women’s employment was the greatest upheaval in the structure of the labour market in the 20th Century,” explains Sara Signorelli, Assistant Professor of Economics at Ecole Polytechnique (IP Paris).
Contrary to what one might imagine, the trajectory of female employment is not linear. In predominantly agricultural societies, women worked as hard as men, “for pay or profit,” said Claudia Goldin in her Nobel Prize acceptance speech. With the industrial revolution, employment opportunities outside the home multiplied, and the roles of men and women were differentiated. Men worked outside the home, while women took charge of the household. “Women have come to play an increasing role in the market economy and in paid work, as their incomes have risen in relation to the cost of household goods. Women’s role in the market has tended to form a ‘U’ shape over the course of history,” explains Claudia Goldin.
From passive players in the labour market to the ‘silent revolution’
The researcher uncovered a new way of looking at the evolution of women’s participation in the American economy. In 1890, 19% of women worked, and they generally stopped when they got married. From the 1940s onwards, the social stigma attached to female employment began to diminish. Women’s employment gradually increased, with the creation of part-time work and the abolition of laws prohibiting married women from working. Between 1950 and 1970, more and more women – including married women – were working. But they remained passive players in the labour market.
It was not until the late 1960s and early 1970s, and what Claudia Goldin calls the ‘silent revolution’, that women really became active. “Until recently, the vast majority of women, including graduates, occupied the valleys, not the peaks. They had jobs, not careers […] Before this change, women who reached the top did so solo. They became symbols, proof that women can achieve great things,” summed up the economist before the Nobel Prize committee.
From the 1970s and 1980s onwards, women gained a perspective, a ‘horizon’ in their careers. This involved investing in education. The economist notes a significant increase in the number of women born in the 1950s going on to university. “They were taking more maths and science courses to prepare for university, they had more and more expectations about their future jobs, and they reacted by increasing the number of years they studied and changing their major to more career-oriented courses,” she describes. Working is also becoming a question of identity and social recognition, and not just a means of generating extra income for the household.
The upheaval of the contraceptive pill
As well as identifying these major changes, Claudia Goldin’s other major contribution is to have highlighted the causes of this ‘silent revolution’. In the economist’s view, one of the main advances that led to these upheavals was the spread of the contraceptive pill in the United States from the 1960s onwards. “When the pill became available, women took it up and regained control of their fertility. This enabled them to become better educated, to enter the labour market, to control their careers and the timing of family formation,” says Roland Rathelot. Women are marrying later, getting a better education, and taking up professions previously considered male-dominated. “The increase in the female workforce was an evolutionary change, but the change in women’s expectations, their horizons, their sense of identity, their new ability to better control their destiny, were revolutionary changes,” argues Claudia Goldin.
The American economist is one of the generation of researchers involved in the ‘credibility revolution’. Her work on the pill is exactly in line with these methods. “The contraceptive method spread gradually in the United States, as the states changed their legislation. Goldin uses the fact that this spread occurred at different rates in different States to deduce the causal impact of contraception. It’s a question of combining causal and descriptive empirical approaches, with a concern to have a formalised model,” explains Roland Rathelot.
The glass ceiling of pay inequality
Between 1950 and 1980, employment among American women rose sharply. From 1980 onwards, the gap between men’s and women’s earnings began to narrow. Claudia Goldin observed ‘spectacular gains’ for women in the 1980s and 1990s. Until then, women’s position in the labour market had only improved, in terms of education, employment and reduced pay inequality. However, the economist notes that from around the last decade onwards, improvements have slowed or even stopped. “In recent history, she notes a convergence in education and income, and then at a certain point, salaries stop converging. You could call this the glass ceiling,” explains Sara Signorelli. In Europe, women still earn 13% less than men. Yet Claudia Goldin points out that in all OECD countries, women are better educated than men.
“In this part of her research, she is interested in skilled occupations, those of educated women. Why do they still not earn as much as men, despite having a higher level of education than men?” summarises Sara Signorelli. Claudia Goldin puts forward several explanations. In recent decades, the incomes of women with higher education have risen less. In addition, their salaries decline with age. Finally, gender differences vary enormously depending on the sector of employment.
“Greedy” jobs and flexible jobs
This is one of the main keys to understanding these inequalities, according to Claudia Goldin. She distinguishes between two types of job. ‘Greedy’ jobs, which are highly paid, require a great deal of time and continuous commitment beyond normal working hours. “When children arrive, more women take care of them, so they choose more flexible, less well-paid jobs that require less availability,” explains Sara Signorelli. For Claudia Goldin, pay inequalities could be reduced by reorganising working conditions. “The simplest way is to create efficient substitutes between workers, which has been done in various professions that use information technologies to transmit information and transfer customers,” she argued in her 2023 speech.
By focusing on women’s place in the labour market and inequalities, Claudia Goldin has helped to develop the field of gender within labour economics. A substantial body of literature has emerged under her influence. For researcher Roland Rathelot, one of her major legacies is also her scientific method. “Claudia Goldin is a great theorist. She goes back and forth between the formulation of modelling hypotheses, formalised theoretical models of the behaviour of players in the labour market and empirical results that support her working hypotheses,” comments the professor. Claudia Goldin observes the long-term, using historical data and quotations. She gathers clues like a detective to understand the macro-economic trends that emerge. In this way, understanding where we come from provides food for thought about women’s employment today.
