Claudia Goldin, 2023 Nobel Prize winner in Economics: 'Feminism became a very bad word in the United States'

https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2024-12-22/claudia-goldin-2023-nobel-prize-winner-in-economics-feminism-became-a-very-bad-word-in-the-united-states.html

Claudia Goldin, 2023 Nobel Prize winner in Economics: ‘Feminism became a very bad word in the United States’

The great economic historian, who paved the way for studies on the gender wage gap, says she’s given up on the term, due to its historic connotations. Nowadays, she prefers to speak of ‘women’s rights’

Amanda Mars
DEC 21, 2024 - 23:30 EST

In 2023, Claudia Goldin (New York, 78 years old) won the Nobel Prize in Economics in recognition of her studies on the underrepresentation of women in the labor market and on the gender wage gap, which she was among the first researchers to identify. She is the only solo woman winner in the history of the prestigious award. An economic historian, she is quick to remind that it is not her job to predict the future, but rather, to analyze events that have already taken place and clarify the reasons as to why they happened. In 1990, she published the iconic Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women, a work that felled several myths about gender inequality in the professional field. She’d never claim to be a fortune teller, but the Harvard professor does identify with being a detective. She has concluded that economic growth and education alone are not enough to reduce the salary gap. For decades, the presence of women in the job market grew as the result of better educational resources and contraceptive methods, which allowed them to delay motherhood and develop their career. But differences in financial compensation persist, largely due to laboral structures and the mechanisms of promotion, which favor men.

Her 2021 book Career and Family: Women’s Century-Long Journey Towards Equality (Princeton University Press) addresses a good part of this historic evolution, taking place over the course of several generations. Our interview, which took place via videocall, happened days before the U.S. presidential elections. During it, Goldin speaks about Trump’s female supporters and confesses her fears regarding the policies that he wants to enact. After ballots were tallied, she declined to comment, but it seems of little importance: the indicators she mentions in our original talk seem to have already unfurled into new realities.

… more … interview …