Ahead of her Princeton University Public Lecture on April 29, 2025, Claudia Goldin, former professor and 2023 Nobel Prize in Economics winner, visited Princeton University Library’s exhibit on women in the World War II labor force. 

The exhibit, which is housed in the Louis A. Simpson International Building, was curated by Charissa Jefferson, Labor Economics Librarian. Goldin’s visit was a full-circle moment for Jefferson, who used Goldin’s book, “Career and Family: Women’s Century-Long Journey toward Equity” as inspiration for the show. 

“I read the book and annotated it for the Industrial Relations Sections’ Lester Book Award announcement,” Jefferson said. “Goldin won the Nobel Prize in Economics after that, and as I was conducting my research for the exhibition, kept in the back of my mind the issues that women have faced, which Goldin articulates in her book.”

The conversations in the book served as a jumping off point for Jefferson to have a similar, national-scale discussion around the exhibit’s WWII artifacts. During the tour, Jefferson walked Goldin through materials from the exhibit’s second rotation, which focus on the needs of women in the workforce, including maternity, child care, and work hours. 

The third and final rotation of materials will be installed in May 2025, and highlight women as employees in environments that were never intended for them. 

“Women had never been afforded this kind of work,” Jefferson said. “How do they adapt? Through safety fashion to building gendered spaces, a woman at work comes ready to work.”

Powering Up the U.S. Labor Force: Women in Industry During World War II (1940-1945) is showing now through June 2025 in the Louis A. Simpson International Building.