Goldin is renowned for her deep expertise and fearless, probing econometric approach to academic research. “I will be doing the empirical work, as correctly as I can, and then you have to craft it,” she says. “It’s a bit like preparing food. You have to serve it to someone and they have to want to eat it.”

Born in 1946, Goldin rose rapidly through the academic world. Honing her skills at Cornell University before completing a master’s at the University of Chicago, she later became the first woman to receive tenure in Harvard’s economics department. Over the years she has analysed the impact that education, technology and societal norms have had on labour with a focus on the inclusion (and exclusion) of women in the workforce. Published in 1990, her landmark book Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women laid the foundations for a radical rethink of the way that women’s employment is viewed in the US. It used quantitative research to explore why and how female contributions to the world of work had been undervalued and misreported. Goldin looked behind the census and brought in biography to paint a clearer picture of female labour history. “I was depicted by the Nobel committee as a historical detective,” she says. “That really is the way I approach my work.”

While Goldin’s writing mainly deals with historical issues, it has often been used by contemporary policy-makers tasked with improving equality in the workplace. Women hold almost 35 per cent of the world’s wealth. Around half of all women are in paid employment, compared with 80 per cent of men. Goldin’s rigorous approach has challenged perceptions and unravelled complex social, cultural and economic dynamics surrounding issues such as the gender pay gap. Crucially, Goldin’s research is credited with taking the study of women’s participation from a niche subcategory to a place of macroeconomic importance for all.

Much of Goldin’s research is a deep dive into history of the labour force, yet her approach also takes aim at contemporary work dynamics. She recently examined the extent to which educated women from different generations have been able to combine a family with a career or job. “Work is often very greedy,” says Goldin. “The more hours you put in, the degree to which you give up your time on vacation or weekends, the degree to which you’re on call in the office, the more you earn. Both members of a different-sex couple could take that greedy job and they’ll be doing really well. But if there are care responsibilities that require, as they do, one parent to be on call at home, then one person has to take a [more flexible] position.”

This dilemma is what Goldin thinks is driving inequity. “Going back to this couple, they can’t both take the greedy job,” she says. “In general, the different-sex couple is enticed to have one of the members of the couple take the greedy job. That then means they give up couple equity because it’s generally the woman who takes the flexible job. They throw gender equality under the bus.”

In a world where work-life patterns are in flux, Goldin’s insights are crucial for moulding a fairer, more inclusive workplace, as well as constructing a tangible heritage for future generations. “Knowing what the problem is may not tell us what the solution is,” says Goldin, though she pinpoints the opportunity that greater flexibility offers women but also the need for social care structures to support women who find themselves eschewing “greedy” well-paid jobs so that they can balance childcare.

In the meantime, Goldin is dedicated to making sure that more women hone their expertise in the academic study of macroeconomics and econometrics; lucrative fields which tend to attract more male students. “One of the reasons that women have not gone into economics in graduate programmes is that they often didn’t major in economics and they didn’t do that because they thought economics was about finance,” says Goldin. “I often hear from young women, ‘Oh, I don’t want to go into economics because it doesn’t concern people.’ But economics certainly does concern people. It teaches you a tremendous amount about the way that the world works.”

Lisen to our recent interview with Claudia Goldin below.