- [Claudia] When you do
economic research,
you have three pieces.
I think of them as balls
that I want floating up
all the time.
I'm juggling them,
and one of them is the idea.
I have to begin with
"What's the question,
what's important?"
♪ [music] ♪
- [Narrator] Economists --
not a group with a lot
of Marys, Natashas, or Juanitas,
and that's caused
a lot of controversy.
However, what's often overlooked
are the actual female economists
who are pushing economics forward
by addressing real-world issues.
Welcome to Women in Economics.
- [Ilyana] One thing I definitely
learned from Claudia
is to approach economic
research like a detective.
I think, especially, when working
in economic history,
when you can't just download
a cleaned-up dataset,
you really have to go searching
open, dusty boxes
and look under rocks.
- [Lawrence] She is the consummate,
economic historian.
She has been
the innovator and pioneer
on bringing economic logic,
and historical and better data,
to understanding
women's role in the economy.
And then she is a fantastic
labor economist,
who had been a leader in work
on understanding inequality.
- [Narrator] Claudia Dale Goldin
was born in 1946 in the Bronx.
She was a problem-solver
from the beginning.
As a child, she avoided
the New York City heat
by spending her summer days
playing cards or reading
in air-conditioned
department stores.
And while she always knew
she wanted to be
a scientist of some kind,
she wasn't always set on economics.
- [Dev] She'll tell stories to me
about when she first went
to the Natural History Museum,
when she was living in the Bronx,
and fell in love with mummies
and thought that archeology
was going to be her passion.
But then she discovered
microbiology,
and she suddenly realized
that microscopes uncovered
a whole new world
of discovery for her.
It wasn't until she actually went
to college at Cornell
that she first got introduced
to economics.
- [Claudia] I decided
to become an economist
because I took an economics class
from an amazing person
named Fred Kahn.
He was so excited about the field
of industrial organization
and product markets and regulation
that it was infectious.
And in fact, when I went
to graduate school
at the University of Chicago,
I went there to study
Industrial Organization.
- [Narrator] Under
the mentorship of Bob Fogel,
Claudia studied
American Economic History,
particularly the economics of slavery
and the post-Civil War South.
She had to travel
to some southern states
to gather archival materials
for this research.
Goldin didn't approach this trip
like a traditional economist.
- [Lawrence] She thought
what I should do
is hitchhike between
the different cities in the south.
She met somebody
from one of the archives
who let her stay at their place,
and when she came back,
her advisor asked her for a list
of the receipts and expenses
associated with the trip,
and she had no clue
that you were supposed
to actually stay in hotels
and pay for actual travel
and that you could
get reimbursements.
But in fact, by actually staying
with the archivist
and getting access
to archives and knowledge
that you wouldn't have had,
it probably created inroads
and understanding
that wouldn't have been possible
if you were going through
usual channels.
- [Narrator] She continued
to focus on economic history,
exploring such questions
as why the North and South
had such different economic outcomes
after the Civil War.
- [Claudia] Then I remember thinking
that there were interesting aspects
in terms of child labor
and families.
It suddenly occurred to me,
the main changes in the labor force
had to do with women.
- [Narrator] She realized
that there was
a huge story in U.S. history
that was missing
from economist scrutiny
and that was the great evolution
of women's labor force participation.
- [Claudia] The women
who were working --
from much of the history
that I was looking at --
were young, single women.
But then it morphed
into studying how it was
that older married women
with families joined the workforce.
- [Narrator] Goldin combined
deep archival research,
history, and economics
to conduct study after study,
examining how various dimensions
of women's participation
in the U.S. labor force
evolved over 200 years.
- [Ilyana] Goldin's best known
for her contributions
to the economics agenda.
She sort of pioneers that area.
- [Lawrence] She has been thinking
about things no one had known --
like why is it that women's jobs
were much more likely
to be paid piece rate.
And men's jobs --
why is money taken away
and given to their parents?
The important role
for caring for the family
and how that affects
the labor market.
She just has a determination
to figure out what's true,
to find the new data,
to read the historical sources,
to think about what
the actual people making decisions.
One of the huge advantages
we have as economists,
we can actually read the diaries
of actual people
making these decisions
and talk to them and interview them
when we're doing
contemporaneous work
or read their inner thoughts.
- [Narrator] As just one example,
Goldin's exhaustive research
has led her
to identify four phases,
going back to the late 19th century,
that shaped women's role
in the U.S. economy.
The first three phases
were evolutionary.
While important advances were made
through the evolutionary phases,
women also had limited control
over key decisions
affecting their employment.
Women in those periods
were more likely to view
their working lives as intermittent
and a means to put food
on the table.
Then came the quiet revolution,
starting in the late 1970s.
Women of the quiet revolution
generally viewed their careers
as a significant part
of their personal identity
and made their own decisions
about their working lives.
Goldin found that this latest phase
was triggered mainly by
increased investments in education
and increased availability
of contraceptives.
- [Edward] More than
any other person,
she has been central in the study
of women and work in economics.
She gave it a broad
historical sweep.
She tied it to economic theory
in a tight way.
Anyone who works on the issue
of women and work going forward
will be citing Claudia Goldin
and will be influenced by her.
- [Narrator] Working together
with Larry Katz,
she's also done critical research
about education, technology,
and the extreme dangers
of income and inequality.
- [Ilyana] She's among
the first to document
what we now think of
as a U shape of inequality
over the 20th century.
To this day, economists
are still trying to figure out
the determinants of that U shape.
- [Narrator] As the first woman
to be offered tenure
in the Harvard Economics Department,
she also takes her role
of mentoring the next generation
of economists seriously.
- [Dev] As any graduate
student will tell you,
the advisors play a critical role.
It's these personal touches
that make Claudia Goldin
such a wonderful advisor --
whether it's walking
her dog, Pika, with her,
receiving midnight texts from her
that always make me laugh.
- [Ilyana] She's not always serious --
which is, of course, very important
because if someone's
constantly serious,
it's just so intimidating
as a student.
- [Narrator] In 2014,
Goldin started
the Undergraduate Women
in Economics Program --
a broad initiative to encourage
more female economics majors.
- [Ilyana] When doing
my best research,
I am reminded of
what I learned from Claudia,
and how research can be fun
how it's a mystery
that you want to unravel.
- [Edward] She brings a joy
to her research.
We were famously called
the "dismal science."
Well, certainly when
Claudia Goldin does economics --
it's anything but dismal.
- [Narrator] Want to better
understand Goldin
and her contributions
to labor economics?
Click here for related materials
and practice questions,
or check out other videos
on how economists
are tackling all sorts of issues,
ranging from weighty topics,
such as the Great Recession
and public health,
to everyday topics, like wine --
yes, even wine!