Nobel laureate Claudia Goldin '67 said every woman who has read the title of her recent talk - "Why Women Won" - has balked.
"To a person, they remarked, 'Really? We won?'" she told a packed audience in Rockefeller Hall's Schwartz Auditorium on Sept. 25. But Goldin commenced the 2025 George Staller Lecture by putting the U.S. women's movement and its progress in perspective, using data to paint a picture of "when women won and how."
Claudia Goldin '67 responds to questions after her lecture on "Why Women Won," in Rockefeller Hall's Schwartz Auditorium on Sept. 25.
"Not that long ago, women were fired for getting married, being pregnant, having children, even being capable of having children," said Goldin, a graduate of the College of Arts and Sciences, professor at Harvard University and the first individual woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Economics, in 2023. "They have non-credited mortgages. They use their husband's name on credit cards."
Women's types of work were restricted, Goldin continued, and they were not seated on juries. And despite the fact that women were not treated equally in the courts, in banks, schools and places of employment, Goldin found in the data that, in the early 1960s, few Americans thought that women suffered discrimination in the same way as Black Americans.
The civil rights and anti-war movements changed that, Goldin said. Women saw that their issues were not being discussed, and they learned to organize and leverage their power as an increasingly important voting bloc.
Goldin gave a rundown of a heightened period of progress for U.S. women in the 1960s and 70s: In 1964, the word "sex" was added - famously, at the last second - to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited employment discrimination. A slew of milestones followed: The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) passed in 1972 and was ratified in 30 states; Title IX, prohibiting discrimination in federally funded education programs, was included in the 1972 Education Act; Roe vs. Wade was decided in 1973; and many more. Goldin charted that 45% of important moments in the women's movement - including legislation, judicial decisions, major events, turning points, prominent speeches - occurred between 1963 and 1973.
"In a very brief period of time, the world for women in the U.S., at least on paper has changed," she said.
But that progress was not without dissent, most notably from women themselves. Goldin tracked public polling data during this period and found that an overwhelming majority of Americans in the late 1960s believed women could be employed, even if their husbands supported them; that they should be more politically active; and even that a woman could become president. But among women, Goldin said, disagreement on the effects of women's employment on children and whether women should have an equal role in business, industry and government persisted into the 1990s, with the division among women greater even than the divide between men and women.
"Divisions among women have always been substantial regarding the traditions and the proper role of women, and these have continued to be very strong," Goldin said.
The "warmth for the women's movement" also declined, Goldin said. Goldin modeled data on political support that showed that after the ERA passed in 1972, anti-feminist groups were mobilized, and more moderate women in the feminist movement became less engaged.
"They withdraw from the movement and therefore the movement will seem more radical," Goldin said. "In year 2000, fewer than 30% of women would accept the description 'feminist.' The word had become tarnished."
The division, and the backlash against the "tremendous accomplishments" of the movement, Goldin said, may be part of the reason women have not reaped all the benefits of their rights. She compared the U.S. to other industrialized countries to show that the U.S. led in terms of codifying rights but continues to lag in support of maternity and parental leave and support for child care.
"The next part of this project is to understand why Americans believe more in rights than benefits and whether and how rights led to change," Goldin said.
To end, Goldin circled back to optimism, reflecting on the progress that has been made since she began her studies at Cornell in 1963. "I find it impossible to imagine that my role would be the same had women's rights remained what they were when I entered this institution as an undergraduate," she said.
The George Staller Lecture is named for George Staller, Ph.D. '57, professor of economics, who taught in the Department of Economics for nearly 50 years until his death in 2009. The series honors Staller's contributions to undergraduate education.
