This year’s Nobel Prize in Economics (formally, the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel) was awarded to Claudia Goldin. Goldin is the third woman ever to win the Prize, and the first woman to win the Prize as sole recipient. She was awarded “for having advanced our understanding of women’s labour market outcomes”.
Nobel prizes tend to be for one-shot ideas or papers that changed the field (last year’s winners, for example, won for one working paper that changed our understanding of banking runs). Professor Goldin’s work, however, is a culmination of a long pattern of papers on the topic of female labour market participation. As such, she is as much an economic historian as she is a labour market economist. Goldin’s work challenged the notion that historically women stayed at home while men worked outside the home: in fact, this pattern really only kicked off during the Industrial Revolution. Prior to this, female labour market participation was far higher.
It’s impossible to summarise the work of a scholar such as Goldin, and it’s almost misleading to try to even point to some of her “key” findings. However, there is one finding that is particularly relevant for those of us trying to build a pro-life culture. The gender pay gap, where women on average earn less than men, has long been studied in the literature. The gender pay gap is impacted both by the gender wage gap (women are paid less per hour) and by labour market participation (women work fewer hours than men). Goldin’s big contribution was to identify that the gender pay gap does not manifest until after women have their first child. In other words, it’s not a gender pay gap – it’s a motherhood pay gap.
In the past, the gender income gap was primarily explained by gender differences in education and in occupation – men had a higher level of education than women on average, and therefore worked in higher-paying jobs. However, women’s education levels are equal to or surpass men’s, and yet the gender income gap persists. In fact, most of the gap can now be explained by differences between men and women in the same job, rather than differences between men and women across jobs. Goldin’s work shows why.
Now, it’s quite possible that the gap is at least partially explained by women making different choices than men regarding labour market participation once they have children. We shouldn’t conclude that any discrepancy in income is always unjust, or due to discrimination. However, it is also the case that the forty hour work week is only feasible if we work on the assumption that someone else is looking after your house and your kids all day. If you don’t believe me, ask anyone with kids. And as long as there is an income gap between mothers and fathers, there is an extra reason for women to not have kids – and therefore an extra reason for women to want abortions.There is no simple solution to this problem, but there are things that could help. Increased family leave, increased uptake of paternity leave, more affordable childcare and a shift in societal expectations of fathers would all help. The pro-life movement could stand to be a lot more active in promoting these policies. Furthermore, pro-life people who work in HR, management, or who own their own businesses can help by encouraging part-time and flexible working as the norm, and by facilitating and encouraging all parents to take leave as necessary. Claudia Goldin herself makes some apposite suggestions in A Grand Gender Convergence: Its Last Chapter, published in 2014 in the American Economic Review:
The converging roles of men and women are among the grandest advances in society and the economy in the last century. These aspects of the grand gender convergence are figurative chapters in a history of gender roles. But what must the “last” chapter contain for there to be equality in the labor market? The answer may come as a surprise. The solution does not (necessarily) have to involve government intervention and it need not make men more responsible in the home (although that wouldn’t hurt). But it must involve changes in the labor market, especially how jobs are structured and remunerated to enhance temporal flexibility. The gender gap in pay would be considerably reduced and might vanish altogether if firms did not have an incentive to disproportionately reward individuals who labored long hours and worked particular hours. Such change has taken off in various sectors, such as technology, science, and health, but is less apparent in the corporate, financial, and legal worlds.
Muireann
The Minimise Project 