Understanding the Intellectual Traditions of Claudia Goldin’s Nobel Winning Work on Gender and its Context in Feminist Economics

The 2023 Nobel Prize was awarded to Claudia Goldin for her work on women’s labor market outcomes. In this paper, we consider the intellectual history of Claudia Goldin’s work in this realm. Namely, after providing background for her intellectual lineage and motivations, we offer descriptions of her two main contributions in this realm as identified by the Nobel committee: the U-shaped curve of development and women’s labor force participation and gender wage gaps. After summarizing these works, we illustrate how they were informed by (and deviate from) her Chicago training, and how they relate to (and deviate from) feminist economics. We conclude by contextualizing Goldin’s broader body of work in feminist economic thought. Among other things, we assert that while Goldin’s choice theoretic frameworks are very much based in her Chicago School roots, her focus on unearthing archival data necessary to include women in cliometric research is more in line with feminist approaches to economics.