Nobel Prize Winner Claudia Goldin’s research on gender equity

Renowned economic historian, Nobel Prize Winner and Harvard Professor, Claudia Goldin’s book ‘Career & Family’ is a must read for any woman and dual career couple.

Here’s why:

It draws on a hundred years of data focusing on college graduate women in five groups, born since the late nineteenth century. This data helps trace out how social and economic transformations have evolved over time and the impact on educated women.

The focus on longitudinal data - info that follows the lives and earnings of individuals - that shows men and women are strikingly similar in the first few years of employment, they’re on an even footing. But by about 10 years after graduating large pay differences become apparent. Career interruptions and average weekly work hours differences cause this gender gap, caused by marriage and after children are born.

The book explores two spheres, career AND family, as they’re two sides of the same coin. Professor Goldin demonstrates that if equity exists within families we have a much better chance of closing gender earnings gaps at work.

It gives a problem with no name a name, “Greedy Work”.

Greedy work is the jobs that pay substantially more than others (private equity, finance, law, consulting) have high time demands and levels of competition, which create large gender earnings gaps. These are the jobs where if you work twice as many hours you will make far more than twice as much money. You’re on-call, working 80+ hour weeks, these are the careers that allow you to tap into a huge income. Women are generally the ones who are on-call but for the family, unpaid.

It demonstrates the economic marketplace is free from bias. Whilst inappropriate treatment and discrimination must be wiped out at work, there would still be large differences in earnings between men and women. The cause is couple inequity and the expectations of society for women to take the caring duties.

This is why at EVEN we provide 1 year of holistic career development for every women enrolled, supporting their life and career. We’re a platform and we’re designed for scale. Why scale? Professor Goldin puts it brilliantly:

“One more woman who makes it to the boardroom, a few progressive tech leaders who go on paternity leave — such solutions are the economic equivalent of tossing a box of Band-Aids to someone with bubonic plague”.