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Economics Nobel awarded to Claudia Goldin for work on women in the labor market
(JTA) — Claudia Goldin, a Jewish scholar at Harvard University, won the Nobel Prize for Economics for her work tracking the disparity in earnings for women in the labor market.
“Claudia Goldin has trawled the archives and collected over 200 years of data from the U.S., allowing her to demonstrate how and why gender differences in earnings and employment rates have changed over time, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said Monday in its release.
Goldin, 77, shattered a glass ceiling in 1989 when she became the first tenured tenured women professor in Harvard’s Economics Department. “I think it will be very good for Harvard to have a tenured woman, and I’m pleased to be that woman,” Goldin said at the time, speaking the the campus student newspaper, the Crimson.
Her seminal work, “Understanding the Gender Gap — An Economic History of American Women” published in 1992, sought to prove that opportunity for women in the labor market was less a function of changing social mores or economic growth, than it was susceptible to a variety of factors, including a woman’s age, her education and expectations of mothers.
“Goldin showed that female participation in the labor market did not have an upward trend over this entire period, but instead forms a U-shaped curve,” the Academy said in its release, referring to the 200-year scope of Goldin’s research.
“The participation of married women decreased with the transition from an agrarian to an industrial society in the early nineteenth century, but then started to increase with the growth of the service sector in the early twentieth century,” it said.
At the press conference announcing the award, Jakob Svensson, the chairman of the prize committee, said Goldin helped elucidate why women remain “vastly underrepresented” in the labor market despite being better educated.
“Understanding women’s role in the labor market is important in society, not the least because if women do not have the same opportunity as men, or they participate on unequal terms, labour, skills and talent go wasted,” said Svensson, a professor of economics at Stockholm University. “Thanks to Professor Goldin’s groundbreaking research we know much more about the underlying facts driving women’s labor market outcomes and which barriers may need top be addressed in the future.”
An attempt by the Nobel committee to reach Goldin by phone at the press conference failed. Prize organizers said they had spoken with her earlier and that she was “surprised and glad.”
Goldin’s most recent work, “Career and Family: Women’s Century-Long Journey toward Equity,” published in 2021, discusses “why true equity for dual career couples remains frustratingly out of reach,” according to Goldin’s Harvard University biography pages.
“Antidiscrimination laws and unbiased managers, while valuable, are not enough,” says Goldin’s precis of her book. “‘Career and Family’ explains why we must make fundamental changes to the way we work and how we value caregiving if we are ever to achieve gender equality and couple equity.”
Goldin, a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science in New York City, has also looked into the historic role of Jews in the marketplace. The authors of a 2003 Boston University paper, “From Farmers to Merchants: A Human Capital Interpretation of Jewish Economic History,” consulted with Goldin.
A 2001 paper she cowrote for the National Bureau of Economic Research on the tendency of women to retain their surname when married, was based in part on an analysis of wedding announcements in the New York Times in 1991. A third of the religious ceremonies were Jewish, the authors noted, “not surprising given the location” of the newspaper. Religious ceremonies for Jews and for others, they found, were likelier to correlate to women changing their name.
Goldin devotes two pages on her Harvard University biography site to her golden retrievers: Prairie, who died in 2009, and Pika, who is 13. She lists his distinctions, as a therapy dog and as a winner of the Excellent Title in Performance Scent Dogs. Her most recent posting marks his “bark mitzvah.”
Also distinguished is her husband, Lawrence Katz, who is a professor of economics at Harvard.
Among the recipients of last year’s Economics Nobel was Ben Bernanke, the Jewish former chairman of the federal reserve.
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The post Economics Nobel awarded to Claudia Goldin for work on women in the labor market appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Israel’s Gantz Demands Gaza Day-After Plan By June 8, Threatens to Quit Cabinet
Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz speaks at Reichman University on Nov. 23, 2021. Photo: Ariel Hermoni / IMoD
Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz demanded on Saturday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commit to an agreed vision for the Gaza conflict that would include stipulating who might rule the territory after the war with Hamas.
Gantz told a press conference he wanted the war cabinet to form a six-point plan by June 8. If his expectations are not met, he said, he will withdraw his centrist party from the conservative premier’s broadened emergency coalition.
Gantz, a retired top Israeli general who opinion polls show is Netanyahu’s most formidable political rival, gave no date for the prospective walkout but his challenge could increase strains on an increasingly unwieldy wartime government.
Netanyahu appears outflanked in his own inner war cabinet, where he, Gantz and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant alone have votes. On Wednesday, Gallant demanded clarity on post-war plans and for Netanyahu to forswear any military reoccupation of Gaza.
If the prime minister were to do that, he would risk angering ultra-nationalist coalition parties that have called for Gaza to be annexed and settled. Losing them could topple Netanyahu, who before the war failed to enlist more centrist partners, given his trial on corruption charges he denies.
“Personal and political considerations have begun to penetrate the Holy of Holies of Israel‘s national security,” Gantz said. “A small minority has seized the bridge of the Israeli ship and is piloting it toward the rocky shoal.”
Gantz said his proposed six-point plan would include bringing a temporary U.S.-European-Arab-Palestinian system of civil administration for Gaza while Israel retains security control.
It would also institute equitable national service for all Israelis, including ultra-Orthodox Jews, who are now exempted from the military draft and have two parties in Netanyahu’s coalition determined to preserve the waiver.
The post Israel’s Gantz Demands Gaza Day-After Plan By June 8, Threatens to Quit Cabinet first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Pushes Into New Parts of Northern Gaza, Recovers Another Slain Hostage
Smoke rises following Israeli strikes, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Jabalia refugee camp northern Gaza Strip, May 13, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa/File Photo
Israeli troops and tanks pushed on Saturday into parts of a congested northern Gaza Strip district that they had previously skirted in the more than seven-month-old war.
Israel’s forces also took over some ground in Rafah, a southern city next to the Egyptian border that is packed with displaced people and where the launch this month of a long-threatened incursion to crush hold-outs of Palestinian Islamist terror group Hamas has alarmed Cairo and Washington.
In what Israeli media said was the result of intelligence gleaned during the latest incursions, the military announced the recovery of the body of a man who was among more than 250 hostages seized by Hamas in a cross-border rampage on Oct. 7 that triggered the war.
Ron Binyamin’s remains were located along with those of three other slain hostages whose repatriation was announced on Friday, the military said without providing further details.
There was no immediate comment from Hamas.
Israel has conducted renewed military sweeps this month of parts of northern Gaza where it had declared the end of major operations in January. At the time, it also predicted its forces would return to prevent a regrouping by the Palestinian Islamist group that rules Gaza.
One site has been Jabalia, the largest of Gaza Strip’s eight historic refugee camps. On Saturday, troops and tanks edged into streets so far spared the ground offensive, residents said.
“Today is the most difficult in terms of the occupation bombardment, air strikes and tank shelling have going on almost non-stop,” said one resident in Jabalia, Ibrahim Khaled, via a chat app.
“We know of dozens of people, martyrs (killed) and wounded, but no ambulance vehicle can get into the area,” he told Reuters.
The Israeli military said its forces have continued to operate in areas across the Gaza Strip including Jabalia and Rafah, carrying out what it called “precise operations against terrorists and infrastructure.”
“The IAF (air force) continues to operate in the Gaza Strip, and struck over 70 terror targets during the past day, including weapons storage facilities, military infrastructure sites, terrorists who posed a threat to IDF troops, and military compounds,” the military said in a statement.
RISING DEATH TOLL
Armed wings of Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, and Fatah said fighters attacked Israeli forces in Jabalia and Rafah with anti-tank rockets, mortar bombs, and explosive devices already planted in some of the roads, killing and wounding many soldiers.
Israel’s military said 281 soldiers have been killed in fighting since the first ground incursions in Gaza on Oct 20.
In the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 1,200 people were killed. About 125 people are still being held in Gaza.
In Rafah, where Israeli tanks thrust into some of the eastern suburbs and clashed with Palestinian fighters there, residents said Israeli bombing from the air and ground persisted all night.
Israel says it must capture Rafah to destroy Hamas and ensure the country’s security.
The post Israel Pushes Into New Parts of Northern Gaza, Recovers Another Slain Hostage first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Houthis Attack Another Oil Tanker in Red Sea
Illustrative. Houthi military helicopter flies over the Galaxy Leader cargo ship in the Red Sea in this photo released Nov. 20, 2023. Photo: Houthi Military Media/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – British naval security firm Ambrey said on Saturday it had received information that a Panama-flagged crude oil tanker was attacked in the Red Sea off Yemen’s Mokha.
Ambrey said a radio communication indicated the vessel was hit by a missile and that there was a fire onboard. It did not provide details of the communication.
Yemen’s Houthi jihadists, who controls the most populous parts of Yemen and are aligned with Iran, has staged attacks on ships in the waters off the country for months in solidarity with the Palestinians.
Months of Houthi attacks in the Red Sea have disrupted global shipping, forcing firms to re-route to longer and more expensive journeys around Southern Africa, and stoking fears that the Israel-Hamas war could spread to destabilize the wider Middle East.
The post Houthis Attack Another Oil Tanker in Red Sea first appeared on Algemeiner.com.