A life in context
The person behind the prize
Goldin is an economic historian who uses archival evidence to investigate changes in work and opportunity. She earned her doctorate at the University of Chicago and became a professor at Harvard. Rather than treating present-day employment patterns as timeless, she reconstructs the choices and constraints faced by earlier generations.
The contribution
She traced women’s employment and earnings across more than two centuries in the United States. Her research explains how education, social expectations, family decisions and the organisation of work interact to shape gender gaps.
The idea in plain language
A snapshot of today’s pay gap cannot explain how it arose. Goldin assembled historical evidence to follow women’s work over more than two centuries in the United States, including work that older records often overlooked.
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