Harvard Professor, Nobel Laureate Claudia Goldin Named 2024 TIME Woman of the Year

Harvard Economics professor and recent Nobel laureate Claudia D. Goldin was named a TIME Woman of the Year for 2024, the magazine announced late last month.

Goldin was awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Economics last October for her work on the role of married women in the labor market. In 2024, TIME honored 12 women for their work uplifting women’s voices to create a more equitable future, including “Barbie” director Greta Gerwig and reigning U.S. Open champion tennis player Coco Gauff.

In an interview with The Crimson Monday night, Goldin said she was “surprised” and “clearly honored.”

“I’m especially honored to be on a list with Greta Gerwig,” Goldin added. “I mean, I have only seen ‘Barbie’ three times.”

Goldin said that though she is honored by the TIME Woman of the Year award, winning the Nobel Prize in Economics “probably does a bit more.”

“People who work in the field of gender or women in economics view that award as emboldening them, as making them feel recognized, as making their work validated,” she said.

The TIME Woman of the Year award, Goldin said, “I don’t think is doing the same thing.”

Despite acknowledging the “enormous progress” of women, Goldin pointed to the “remaining set of differences.”

In particular, she spoke about her hopes for greater women’s rights on the global stage, expressing disappointment at the “impediments” against abortion access in the U.S.

“There’s a sense that there’s progress in many parts of the world,” Goldin said, “and yet in the U.S., there’s a tremendous resistance.”

“We have to realize that we are a very heterogeneous country,” she said. “We have to figure out how to balance both sides. We cannot take extreme positions — we have to somehow come together.”

Looking forward, Goldin said she is excited to continue working on “a paper that ventured into the legal history of women’s rights” — which she had begun writing prior to winning the Nobel Prize — in addition to teaching her “absolutely great” students in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

“Most of all, I am at Harvard because of the students,” Goldin said. “They challenge me every day.”

As for her TIME Woman of the Year award, Goldin said, “I never celebrate anything.”

“The celebrations that I take are a walk in the woods with the dog, listening to the birds coming back in the spring, looking at the trees just beginning to bloom,” she said. “Those are my celebrations.”