Gender pay gap pioneer wins economics Nobel

Claudia Goldin hailed the decision 'as an award for big ideas and for long term change'

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Harvard economic historian Claudia Goldin won the 2023 Nobel economics prize for her work H exposing gender gap issues including deeply rooted wage inequality between men and women, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said on Monday.

The prestigious award, formally known as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, is the last of this year's crop of Nobel prizes and is worth 11 million Swedish crowns, or nearly $1 million.

"This year's Laureate in the Economic Sciences, Claudia Goldin, provided the first comprehensive account of women's earnings and labour market participation through the centuries," the prize-giving body said in a statement.

"Her research reveals the causes of change, as well as the main sources of the remaining gender gap."

The award for economics is the final instalment of this year's crop of Nobels that have seen prizes go to covid-19 vaccine discoveries, atomic snapshots and "quantum dots" as well as to a Norwegian dramatist and an Iranian activist.

Goldin, who in 1990 became the first woman to be tenured at Harvard's economics department, is only the third woman to win the Nobel economics prize and the first to win it by herself rather than sharing it.

She hailed the decision as "an award for big ideas and for long term change".