Womenomics

Womenomics. It’s the title of a book by Claire Shipman and Katty Kay. In an endorsement, Sheryl Sandburg said, “Womenomics makes a compelling statement about the financial impact women can have in the workplace…”

On October 9, 2023, Professor Claudia Goldin, a trailblazing economist at Harvard University, was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for her work exploring the role of women in the labor market. The prize honors Goldin’s work in creating “the first comprehensive account of women’s earnings and labour market participation through the centuries.”

It was fascinating reading about her groundbreaking research that looked at the trends of women’s workplace participation, especially married women, through the centuries as the economic models shifted from agrarian to industrial to service-sector work.

Goldin’s research also explores the reasons for stubborn wage gaps between men and women, including pay discrimination and parenthood. While pay gaps between women and men in the past may have been explained by differences in education levels and career choices, economic and technical advancements, like the birth control pill which played a pivotal role in increasing college enrollment of women, prove those explanations are no longer valid. Discrimination based on gender and parental status still results in pay inequities among men and women in the same jobs.

Women, she found, take an immediate hit to their earnings after the birth of their first child, when many are forced to scale back their hours or forgo advancement opportunities because they handle the bulk of child care.

She attributes this to the rise of “greedy work,” or the idea that employees who are willing to work longer hours get rewarded so much more — disproportionately more than the extra time they put in. Employers generally place a premium on being on call, all the time, especially in high-wage professions. And it is fathers who typically specialize at being on call at work while mothers specialize being on call at home.

While social norms and preferences play a role in these outcomes, Goldin’s research shows that workplace structures also matter.

Consider Pharmacists, a high-income career, still require postsecondary training and specialized knowledge. Better IT and the rise of retail chains allow information to be easily transmitted from one pharmacist to another. This evolution enabled shift work, reduced the penalty for part-time work and ultimately narrowed the gender wage gap in the profession.

But major barriers remain, including a lack of accessible and affordable child care and paid family and medical leave. As we discuss in the final chapter of The Big Book of HR, almost a third of U.S. workers have children under the age of 18 at home, yet finding affordable childcare has been a problem in this country for many years. Childcare insecurity can result in parents working fewer hours, taking pay cuts, or leaving jobs. About 25% of American workers lack paid time off, and the U.S. is an outlier for its lack of paid leave requirement for workers among developed countries.

These are just two of the challenges facing working mothers, and Goldin’s research is clearly a call to action.