The 2023 Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded on Monday to the American Claudia Goldin for her work on the evolution of women’s place in the job market and their income.
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• Read also: The 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature goes to Norwegian Jon Fosse
Favorite of this prize, Claudia Goldin, 77, was rewarded for having “advanced our understanding of the situation of women in the labor market”, announced the Nobel jury.
The first woman appointed to head the economics department at Harvard, this specialist in labor and economic history is only the third woman since the creation of the economics prize to be rewarded.
Until now, only the American Elinor Ostrom (2009) and the Franco-American Esther Duflo (2019) had won it.
“Claudia Goldin’s research has given us new and often surprising insight into the historical and contemporary role of women in the labor market,” said the jury.
A specialist in economic history, “she highlighted the main factors of differences between men and women” and how they have evolved over the last two centuries as industrialization progressed, with a decline in work. women during the 19th century, according to the jury’s press release.
Different elements come into play: the nature of income, domestic constraints and the expectations of women.
“These elements have changed from one generation to the next,” emphasized the Nobel committee.
For a long time, young women did not expect to have a career, and it is only recently that they have integrated the possibility of a long and active career.
“In recent decades, more and more women have been studying and, in high-income countries, they generally have a higher level of education than men,” argued the jury.
Globally, around 50% of women participate in the workforce, compared to 80% of men, and women earn less and “are less likely to reach the top of the career ladder”, facing ” glass ceiling” noted Randi Hjalmarsson, member of the Nobel committee.
To reach her conclusions, Claudia Goldin carried out meticulous work, never undertaken before.
She delved into archives and collected more than 200 years of data on the United States, allowing her to show how and why differences in income and employment rates between men and women have changed over time. time”, according to the jury which evokes “detective” work, carried out before the advent of computers and the internet.
While historically, a large part of the income gap could be explained by differences in education and professional choices, Ms. Goldin “showed that the bulk of this income difference today is between men and women exercising the same profession, and that it largely occurs at the birth of the first child.
His work also demonstrated that “access to the contraceptive pill” played an important role in accelerating the increase in education levels during the 20th century, by “providing new opportunities for career planning” , according to the Nobel committee.
Last year, the prize went to Ben Bernanke, the former president of the American central bank (Fed) and his compatriots Douglas Diamond and Philip Dybvig, for their work on banks and their necessary rescues during financial storms.
The only one not to have been provided for in Alfred Nobel’s will, the economics prize “in memory” of the inventor was added much later to the five traditional prizes, earning him among his detractors the nickname ” fake Nobel.
In 1968, on the occasion of its tercentenary, the central bank of Sweden (Riksbank), the oldest in the world, established an economic sciences prize in memory of Alfred Nobel, by making available to the Nobel Foundation a sum annual equivalent to the amount of the other prizes.
The most prestigious Nobel Prize, that of peace, was awarded Friday to imprisoned Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi.
Previously, the Norwegian Jon Fosse had been rewarded in literature. The chemistry prize was awarded to Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus and Alexei Ekimov for their work on nanoparticles called quantum dots.
In physics, three specialists in the movement of electrons were awarded the prize, Anne L’Huillier, Pierre Agostini and Ferenc Krausz, and in medicine a duo, Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman, for their progress on the messenger RNA vaccine.