Why women earn less than men: Nobel for economic historian who probed pay gap

為什么女性收入低于男性：探究薪酬差距的經(jīng)濟史學(xué)家獲得諾貝爾獎

Claudia Goldin mined 200 years of data to show that greater economic growth did not lead to wage parity, nor to more women in the workplace.

克勞迪婭·戈爾丁 (Claudia Goldin) 挖掘 200 年來的數(shù)據(jù)表明，經(jīng)濟增長的加快并沒有帶來工資平等，也沒有帶來更多女性進入職場。

The 2023 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences — the ‘economics Nobel’ — has been awarded to economic historian Claudia Goldin at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, “for having advanced our understanding of women’s labour market outcomes”. 2023 年瑞典央行經(jīng)濟科學(xué)獎（被譽為“經(jīng)濟學(xué)諾貝爾獎”）被授予馬薩諸塞州劍橋市哈佛大學(xué)的經(jīng)濟歷史學(xué)家克勞迪婭·戈爾丁，以表彰其“增進了我們對女性勞動力市場結(jié)果的理解”。 Goldin’s work has helped to explain why women have been under-represented in the labour market for at least the past two centuries, and why even today they continue to earn less than men on average (by around 13%). 戈爾丁的研究有助于解釋為什么至少在過去兩個世紀里女性在勞動力市場中的代表性不足，以及為什么即使在今天她們的平均收入仍然低于男性（約 13%）。 Although such inequalities are widely recognized, they present a puzzle for economic models because they represent not just a potential injustice, but also what economists call a market inefficiency. Women seem to be both under-utilized and under-incentivized in the labour force, even though those in high-income countries typically now have a higher educational level than do men. 盡管這種不平等得到了廣泛認可，但它們給經(jīng)濟模型帶來了難題，因為它們不僅代表了潛在的不公正，而且代表了經(jīng)濟學(xué)家所說的市場低效率。盡管高收入國家的女性現(xiàn)在通常比男性擁有更高的教育水平，但在勞動力市場中，女性似乎沒有得到充分利用，也沒有得到充分的激勵。 Goldin brought history to bear on this question through rigorous forensic analysis of how changes in women’s participation in the labour force have been influenced by social, political and technological change over the past two centuries. 戈爾丁通過對過去兩個世紀社會、政治和技術(shù)變革如何影響女性勞動力參與率的變化進行嚴格的法證分析，用歷史來回答這個問題。 “The strength of her work comes from combining careful and innovative historical data with insights from economic theories of wage determination, employment, discrimination and the political economy,” says economist Claudia Olivetti at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. 新罕布什爾州漢諾威達特茅斯學(xué)院的經(jīng)濟學(xué)家克勞迪婭·奧利維蒂 (Claudia Olivetti) 表示：“她的工作的優(yōu)勢在于將細致且創(chuàng)新的歷史數(shù)據(jù)與工資決定、就業(yè)、歧視和政治經(jīng)濟學(xué)等經(jīng)濟理論的見解相結(jié)合?！?“I am delighted to see Claudia’s work recognized,” Olivetti says. “She has been such an inspiration to many women and young researchers. Leading with passion, curiosity, integrity, she taught us to be brave and go for the big questions.” “我很高興看到克勞迪婭的工作得到認可，”奧利維蒂說。 “她給許多女性和年輕研究人員帶來了很大的啟發(fā)。她以熱情、好奇心和正直的態(tài)度領(lǐng)導(dǎo)著我們，教會我們勇敢地面對重大問題。” More growth; low pay?更多成長；低工資

Before Goldin’s studies, it was widely thought that the increase in the proportion of women in work over the course of the twentieth century was a reflection of economic growth — higher growth meant more women in employment. But by looking back carefully at older historical records, Goldin showed that the proportion of married women involved in paid work (for example in agriculture or textiles manufacturing) was at least as high in the late eighteenth century, when economic growth rates were much lower, as it is today. This industry was generally hidden behind an opaque census designation of ‘wife’.

在戈爾丁的研究之前，人們普遍認為二十世紀女性就業(yè)比例的增加是經(jīng)濟增長的反映——更高的增長意味著更多的女性就業(yè)。但通過仔細回顧更早的歷史記錄，戈爾丁表明，在 18 世紀末，當(dāng)經(jīng)濟增長率要低得多時，從事有酬工作（例如農(nóng)業(yè)或紡織制造業(yè)）的已婚婦女比例至少同樣高。就像今天一樣。這個行業(yè)通常隱藏在不透明的人口普查“妻子”稱號背后。

Goldin showed that industrialization disrupted this pattern by making it harder for women to work from home. Her identification of a U-shaped curve in women’s labour participation over 200 years, published in her 1990 book?

Understanding the Gender Gap

, demolished the notion of a simplistic link to economic growth.

戈爾丁表明，工業(yè)化使女性更難在家工作，從而破壞了這種模式。她在 1990 年出版的《理解性別差距》一書中指出了 200 年來女性勞動參與率呈 U 形曲線，推翻了與經(jīng)濟增長簡單化聯(lián)系的觀念。

Goldin also demonstrated that, although work opportunities for women expanded in the twentieth century, especially in societies in which children leave the parental home, they were not exploited as much as they could have been.

戈爾丁還表明，盡管二十世紀婦女的工作機會有所增加，特別是在兒童離開父母家庭的社會中，但她們并沒有受到應(yīng)有的剝削。

Goldin explained this shortfall as being down to expectations. Influenced by what they saw in their parents’ generation, young women tended to make educational choices that did not reflect an expectation of future career prospects. Only by the 1970s did women anticipate how much they might be able to work and invest their efforts accordingly. As Goldin showed in collaboration with economist Lawrence Katz, that situation was boosted by access to the contraceptive pill from the 1960s, which gave women more control in planning for the future.

戈爾丁解釋說，這一差距低于預(yù)期。受到父輩所見所聞的影響，年輕女性往往做出的教育選擇并不反映對未來職業(yè)前景的期望。直到 20 世紀 70 年代，女性才預(yù)計自己能夠工作多少，并相應(yīng)地投入精力。正如戈爾丁與經(jīng)濟學(xué)家勞倫斯·卡茨 (Lawrence Katz) 合作所表明的那樣，這種情況因 20 世紀 60 年代避孕藥的使用而加劇，這讓女性在規(guī)劃未來時擁有了更多的控制權(quán)。

Goldin has also shown how gender inequalities in pay have not followed a simple relationship with economic growth, either. The pay gap was smaller during the industrial revolution of 1820–50, for example, because demand for clerical services increased, but changed little between 1930 and 1980, when rewards for uninterrupted careers promoted de facto wage discrimination. Goldin and Katz, with economist Marianne Bertrand, showed in 2010 that parenthood has a key role in maintaining pay inequality, largely through loss of earnings when women suspend or restrict work in favour of child-rearing.

戈爾丁還表明，薪酬中的性別不平等并不與經(jīng)濟增長存在簡單的關(guān)系。例如，在 1820-50 年工業(yè)革命期間，工資差距較小，因為對文書服務(wù)的需求增加，但在 1930 年至 1980 年間變化不大，當(dāng)時對不間斷職業(yè)的獎勵促進了事實上的工資歧視。戈爾丁和卡茨與經(jīng)濟學(xué)家瑪麗安·貝特朗 (Marianne Bertrand) 在 2010 年表明，為人父母在維持薪酬不平等方面發(fā)揮著關(guān)鍵作用，這主要是因為女性為了撫養(yǎng)孩子而暫?；蛳拗乒ぷ?，從而導(dǎo)致收入損失。

Goldin’s research has dismantled simple ideas about how gender inequalities in labour markets have changed and the reasons for these changes. Although she has tended not to make policy recommendations for how the problems might be addressed, her scrupulous work in looking at the issues through the lens of history can help to show which interventions are more or less likely to succeed.

戈爾丁的研究推翻了關(guān)于勞動力市場性別不平等如何變化以及這些變化的原因的簡單想法。盡管她傾向于不就如何解決這些問題提出政策建議，但她從歷史的角度審視問題的嚴謹工作有助于表明哪些干預(yù)措施或多或少可能成功。

“Goldin has been saying for many years that the way work is organized in many professions is especially female-unfriendly,” says Barbara Petrongolo, an economist at the University of Oxford, UK. Petrongolo says that companies are now starting to change their practices with the introduction of flexible, family-friendly working arrangements and the provision of on-site creches. Some of these changes have happened as a result of policy interventions, but some are coming bottom-up from firms that see the advantages of attracting female talent.

英國牛津大學(xué)經(jīng)濟學(xué)家芭芭拉·彼得隆戈洛 (Barbara Petrongolo) 表示：“戈爾丁多年來一直在說，許多職業(yè)的工作組織方式對女性尤其不友好?！?Petrongolo 表示，公司現(xiàn)在開始改變做法，引入靈活、家庭友好的工作安排和提供現(xiàn)場托兒所。其中一些變化是政策干預(yù)的結(jié)果，但有些變化是由看到吸引女性人才優(yōu)勢的公司自下而上發(fā)生的。

However, not all of these ideas and solutions will have universal applicability. Naila Kabeer, who studies gender in international development at the London School of Economics, points out, for example, that the U-shaped curve in female labour-force participation has not proved to hold globally.

然而，并非所有這些想法和解決方案都具有普遍適用性。例如，倫敦經(jīng)濟學(xué)院研究國際發(fā)展中的性別問題的奈拉·卡比爾指出，女性勞動力參與率的 U 形曲線尚未證明在全球范圍內(nèi)都成立。

“It was based on the idea that developing countries would go through the same processes as did advanced industrialized ones,” she says, “and did not take account that globalization would allow countries to move from farming to female-intensive industrialization processes quite as fast as they did.”

“這是基于這樣的想法，即發(fā)展中國家將經(jīng)歷與先進工業(yè)化國家相同的過程，”她說，“并且沒有考慮到全球化將使各國以同樣快的速度從農(nóng)業(yè)轉(zhuǎn)向女性密集型工業(yè)化進程。就像他們所做的那樣。”

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-03190-4