Explained | What were Claudia Goldin’s observations about female participation in the labour force which earned her the Nobel Prize?

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• What is her research about?

• female participation in the labour market did not exhibit an upward trend over the entire period, but rather a U-shaped curve

• “Men are able to have the family and step up because women step back in terms of their jobs, but both are deprived. Men forgo time with their family and women often forgo their career”

• How did female participation move between the agrarian and industrial era?

• The participation of married women decreased with the transition from an agrarian to an industrialised society in the early nineteenth century

• a standard practice entailed categorising women’s occupation as “wife” in records. This was incorrect because the identification did not account for activities other than domestic labour such as working alongside husbands in farms

• According to Professor Goldin, correcting the data about female participation established that the proportion of women in the labour force was considerably greater at the end of the 1890s than was shown in the official statistics

• She also observed that prior to the advent of industrialisation in the nineteenth century, women were more likely to participate in the labour force. This was because industrialisation had made it harder for married women to work from home since they would not be able to balance the demands of their family

• What happens when the curve moves upwards?

• The beginning of the twentieth century marked the upward trajectory for female participation in the labour force. According to Professor Goldin, technological progress, the growth of the service sector and increased levels of education brought an increasing demand for more labour.

• How are expectations becoming a factor?

• The Harvard professor observed that in the early twentieth century, for example, women were expected to exit the labour force upon marriage. . When things turned marginally in the second half of the century, married women would return to the labour force once their children were older. However, this meant a reliance on educational choices that were made previously, as the author notes, at a time when they were not expected to have a career

• Another pivotal factor was the introduction of birth control pills. This created conditions for women to plan their careers better