Source: Xinjing News
Author: Zheng Xiaoting
Finally, a third woman won the Nobel Prize in Economics.
On October 9, 2023, the Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded Professor Claudia Gordin of Harvard University to recognize her "to enhance our understanding of the results of the women's labor market."Gordin is also the first female economist to enjoy the prize.But compared to these, Gordin's research topic seems to be more "attractive" -Why do women always make less money than men?
It can also be said that Gordin's Nobel Prize is not only because of his research on the women's labor market, but also because of his use of historical materials for more than 200 years, from a historical perspective, to find the participation rate of driving the women's labor market.And the key factor of changes in the gap between gender wages, which "enhances our understanding of the results of the women's labor market."
One of the pioneering contributions of Gordin's award -winning is the monographs she published at the University of Oxford Press in 1990 to understand the gender gap: the economic history of American women.Gordin also claims to be an economic historian and labor economist.Therefore, this time the award can also be considered as a scholar in the field of economic history.
Gender discrimination is still continuing to wage wages
Historically, the prejudice of women's encounters is obvious.Not only in Chinese history books and genealogy, few women can keep their full names. Before the 20th century, the American population census was only registered for male occupations, and women were usually default to "wives". Although many "wives" were engaged in housework outside the houseworkA certain occupation, such as agriculture, handicraft industry or business business.
Due to the lack of records of women's work in historical data, researchers' research on women's work uses data after the 20th century.So that there is a clear positive correlation between people's economic growth and women's labor participation, but because of the lack of data before and after the industrial revolution and decades after the industrial revolution, it is not determined whether this relationship is common or 20The century is unique.
As an economic historian and a labor economist, Gordin has revised historical data by studying historical data such as various survey data, industrial statistics and population census.In addition, she used the revised historical data to show the overall picture of women's participation in market labor in the past 200 years -the participation rate of women's labor, and has not continued to increase with economic growth.
Det back to the end of the 18th century, Gordin revealed a surprising new historical fact: before the rise of industrialization in the 19th century, women are more likely to join the labor force.One of the reasons is that industrialization makes many married women more difficult to work at home, and then cannot take care of work and family and give up work.
Goldin proves that although a large number of unmarried women are employed by the manufacturing industry, the total number of women's labor after the industrial revolution has declined because of the divorced women withdrawing from the labor market.Therefore, industrialization and economic growth will not automatically reduce the gender gap in the labor market, and even the opposite.
It was not until the rise of the service industry since the 20th century that it really provided conditions for women to participate in market labor markets in terms of demand.The expansion of education, social customs, laws and women's expectations for occupations, and the emergence of convenient and safe health measures, from the perspective of labor supply, make women have the ability, willingness, and time to enter the labor market.
For this reason, in the economic growth of high -income countries, women have played an increasingly important role.
Dan Gordin discovered that during the industrial revolution and the post -industrial period of the United States, women's good jobs increased, and the gap between gender wages was significantly reduced; after the "First World War", from 1930 to 1980Change.With the development of the service industry, although women's labor participation rates have increased, the differences in gender wages are attributed to gender discrimination from 20%to 55%.
It is worth noting that not all the gap between gender wages can be summarized as the result of gender discrimination.Because the gap between the gender income of compensation labor can be explained by the factors such as productivity, age, work duration, level of education, and occupations that can be obtained.
Urgently needs to balance women's income due to fertility
In any case, women always earn less than men, which seems to be a universal fact that is difficult to change.So, what exactly has the gap between wages caused by gender discrimination?Gordin believes that it is caused by children.
Goldin and her many collaborators, including her husband who has the status of labor economists, found that the gap between the wages of women and men before fertility was small, but the income of women and men after fertility after fertilityThe gap was immediately widen.
This is usually called "mother's punishment".Moreover, such "mother -in -law punishment" will not disappear with women with more and better education, or introduce equal equal pay or equal employment of men and women.
Gordin pointed out that because women are more responsible for taking care of their children than men, it has made women's career development and revenue growth after childbirth.
The results of this research also reminded that in order to promote gender equality in the labor market, the whole society needs to work hard. All parties really take action in the ground to reasonably share the family responsibilities of children and children.
You must know that raw children and daughters are not personal things for women.Because women's fertility benefits are many aspects, the cost of birth and education is mainly or even borne by women. It is naturally difficult to say.
This requires the income gap caused by fertility sharing measures and the guarantee system of women's property rights after childbirth and the guarantee system of women's property rights.Otherwise, only by giving women more holidays to encourage fertility policies, it will only exacerbate the labor market discrimination against women. There are fewer women's employment opportunities to further expand the poor income.
In fact, even in the women's economy academic circle represented by Gordin, this situation is not uncommon.
For example, in the economics and departments of Chinese universities, there are many girls in economics. The proportion of women and men in the doctoral stage is flat, and the proportion of women's teaching or researchers is not low.Before fertility, women's research results were basically equivalent to men, but after fertility, many women disappeared from the scientific research circle.
Based on this, the study of Gordin's gender wage gap is quite realistic for the current world of fertility and increasingly short -term labor.And its solid research results and the nobel awards won this time have also greatly encouraged the majority of female economists.
Especially, Gordin, born in 1946, is already 77 years old, but is still active on the front line of economics research.Scholars here are brave to take root in reality, constantly explore the peak of scientific science, and benefit human society.
(The author is an associate professor at the School of Economics of Jinan University)
