Finance and economicsGolden GoldinA Nobel for an economist who has overturned assumptions about gender equality.On the morning of October 9th the National Bureau of Economic Research circulated a working paper to economists around the world entitled “Why Women Won”.In the paper, Claudia Goldin of Harvard University documents how women achieved equal rights in American workplaces and families.Rather fittingly, a few hours later, Ms Goldin was announced as the winner of this year’s economics Nobel prize, for advancing “our understanding of women’s labour-market outcomes”.Having been the first woman to be granted tenure at Harvard’s economics department, Ms Goldin is now the third woman to have won the subject’s Nobel prize.Taken together, her research provides a comprehensive history of gender labour-market inequality over the past 200 years.In telling this history, she has overturned assumptions about both historical gender relations and what is required to achieve greater equality in the present day.Before Ms Goldin’s work, economists had thought that economic growth led to a more level playing field.
