In Russia the wage gap exists (after 1991, but also before) and statistical analysis shows that most of it cannot be explained by lower qualifications of women compared to men. On the other hand, occupational segregation by gender and labor market discrimination seem to account for a large share of it.Ogloblin, C. G. (1999) "The Gender Earnings Differential in the Russian Transition Economy. Industrial and Labor Relations 52(4): 602-634.Katz, K. (2001) Gender, Work and Wages in the Soviet Union. A Legacy of Discrimination. Palgrave. .Gerry, C. J., Kim, B. and C. A. Li (2004) "The gender wage gap and wage arrears in Russia Evidence from RLMS". Journal of Population Economics 17:267-288. (p. 268).Kazakova, E. "Wages in a Growing Russia. When is a 10 percent rise in the gender wage gap good news?". Economics of Transition, Vol. 15 (2):365-592.
Eurostat defines the (unadjusted) gender pay gap (or wage gap) as the difference between average gross hourly earnings of male paid employees and of female paid employees as a percentage of average gross hourly earnings of male paid employees.Retrieved on November 23, 2012. In other words, it is the difference between 1 and the gender pay ratio (gender pay ratio = (women's average earnings/men's average earnings)*100%).
It serves to some extent as an indicator of gender inequality level within a country, but even more so for the unequal opportunities faced by women and men in the labor market. Also the indicator reflects the incompatible requirements of career and family as well as the poverty risk of single parent households, both problems which mostly women face.Retrieved on November 23, 2012.
The October Revolution (1917) and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 have shaped the developments in the gender wage gap. These two main turning points in the Russian history frame the analysis of Russia's gender pay gap found in the economic literature. Consequently, the pay gap study can be examined for two periods: the wage gap in Soviet Russia (1917–1991), and the wage gap in the transition and post-transition (after 1991).
Soviet Russia
Under communism women's participation in the labor market was encouraged. The rapid industrialization and egalitarian ideology pressed for women to leave their homes and join the ranks of the working class. In 1936, Article 122 of the new Soviet Constitution decreed equal rights for women and their equal standing with men in all spheres of economic, political, social and cultural life.
Women also enjoyed various benefits, including fully paid maternity leaves, free childcare provided by enterprise or state owned kindergartens, as well as legal protection from overly physical and dangerous work.Newell, A., and B. Reilly, (2000) "The Gender Pay Gap in the Transition from Communism: Some Empirical Evidence" William Davidson Institute. Working paper Number 305. Some researchersMcAuley, A. (1981) Women's Work and Wages in the Soviet Union. George Allen & Unwin. London. . conclude that it was partly due to theses type of laws that gender differences in earnings never ceased to exist in Russia and in the whole Soviet Union.
The gender pay gap: Evidence
Soviet authorities did not publish data on wages and salaries classified by sex. As a result, only a partial perspective on gender pay gap is possible based on small scale studies. Nevertheless, they can be useful as they offer a benchmark.
One of the economists who provides some data on the gender wage gap in Soviet Russia is A. Rashin (1928). According to him, the gender pay gap in the textile industry for Leningrad (today's Saint Petersburg) in 1928 was 27.4%, while in Ivanovo Oblast it was as small as 5.5%.Rashin, A. (1930) Sostav fabrichno-zavodskogo proletariata. Moscow. However, according to Khrachev (1964), these figures tend to underestimate the gender wage gap. His argument is that in those days the textile industry was known for paying a generous salary to women but not to men, hence on the aggregate level the pay gap would be much higher than what Rashin presented.Khrachev, G. (1964) Brak i sem'ya v SSSR, Moscow.
Despite the lack of official statistics, McAuley (1981) managed to get data on wage differentials from a variety of sample surveys conducted in multiple regions of the country. For 1940 his estimates of the gender wage gap range between 47% and 53%. By 1958 seemed to improve and the wage gap declined to 39.5%.
He also finds that between 1960 and 1965 the gender earnings gap (specifically for Leningrad) was around 30.7%. Very similar estimates were found by L. Migranova and M. Mozhina (1991), who estimated for Taganrog a female to male pay gap of 33% for 1968 and 32% for 1977–1978.Migranova, L. A. and M. A. Mozhina (1991) Zarabotnaia Plata i dokhody semei. Osnovnye napravleniia sovershenstvovaniia raspredeletel'nykh otnoshenii in Rimashevskaia and Onikov. For 1972 – 1976 McAuley (1981) assumes that the wage gap must have declined due to the wage revision performed in those years pushing the gender earnings gap down to 20–25%. However, in the last years of the Soviet Union the pay gap according to K. Katz (2001) increased again to 36%, while according to Newell and Reilly's calculations this ratio was higher – 70.9%.
Comparing these statistics to those from Western and Scandinavian countries one would have to conclude that while Soviet Russia had similar wage differentials to those in Western countries, the Scandinavian countries did definitely better than Soviet Russia. Other socialist countries in Eastern Europe had slightly lower statistics than those in Soviet Russia.
YearCountry and Labor Force GroupGender wage gap (unadjusted)1953Great Britain 46%1968Great Britain47%1975Great Britain38%1969Norway:manufacturing26%1968Sweden: industrial workers21%1966France: employees37%1964Switzerland: workers37%1959Czechoslovakia: socialist sector33.8%1970Czechoslovakia: socialist sector32.9%1972Poland: socialist sector33.5%1972Hungary: state sector27.5%SOURCE: McAuley, A. (1981) Women's Work and Wages in the Soviet Union, (p. 21)
Sources of the gender pay gap
Even though the female labor force participation in the Soviet Union was higher than in Western countries (For 1960–1988: Austria – 60.7%, France – 72%, Italy – 54.2%, Ireland – 44.7%, Portugal – 67.4%, Soviet Union around 90%), throughout its history women were regarded as a "specific labor force"Ogloblin, C. G. (1999) "The Gender Earnings Differential in the Russian Transition Economy. Industrial and Labor Relations Review Vol. 52, No 4. (p. 604). and occupational segregation was a lived reality. C. G. Ogloblin (1999), for instance, mentions that protective legislation restricted women's employment in jobs that were considered dangerous or physically demanding and encouraged their entrance into jobs that suit their "biological and psychological peculiarities" and their "moral ethical temperament".
Women hence ended up in such sectors as education, healthcare, trade, food and light industry, while men were mostly concentrated in the heavy industry, mining, construction and engineering. Such segregation was one of the main forces that drove the gender wage gap in the Soviet Russia. This was due to the fact that in the centralized wage system, where market forces did not interfere, earnings within sectors were determined by the perception of a certain sector's productivity, laboriousness and social usefulness.
Since Marxist ideology considers the productive sphere (manufacturing) superior to the unproductive one (services, office jobs), the blue-collar wages always tended to be higher than the white-collar wages. Women in Russia were highly concentrated in the white-collar jobs therefore their earnings were on average lower than those of men throughout the whole Soviet Union's history.
Nevertheless, occupational segregation was not the only contributor the wage gap during the soviet times, as labor market discrimination, even though forbidden by law, was well set afoot and contributed in big measure to wage differentials. Ogloblin (1999) writes: "Since household and family responsibilities were explicitly treated as women's domain, women often chose to sacrifice career interests to family responsibilities. Furthermore, since both creativity and authority were identified with men, women who tried to pursue managerial or professional careers encountered subtle but effective resistance to their promotion".
His text suggests that glass ceilings were present in the Soviet Union and deeply rooted in people's perceptions of women's role and gender norms. Newell and Reilly (2000) similarly mention that, despite high labor force participation, women held few senior positions mostly due to two reasons: first, since Russia never went through the revolution in gender relations that took place in the West, the slow but fundamental shift in household division of labor did not happen; second and as a consequence, working women had to carry a double burden as the domestic duties remained entirely on their shoulders leaving them less time to pursue a career.
A. McAuley (1981), on the other hand, identifies an additional reason for the persistence of wage gaps in Russia – the "differential participation" of women. Differential participation is nothing else but the idea that women worked shorter hours than men and in some sense supplied less labor. McAuley (1981) mentions that this was mostly due to the fact that domestic work was viewed as being almost exclusively women's responsibility.
Economic transition: Soviet Russia to Russian Federation
The dissolution of the Soviet Union and the transition from a centrally planned economy to a market economy led to significant changes in all spheres including the labor market. The elimination of most controls on prices, wages, trade and currency exchange, enforcement of restrictions on enterprise subsidies, and exposure to international competition influenced in great measure the labor market institutions and regulations. Economic restructuring required the reallocation of the labor force from the obsolete sectors to the more productive ones.
Therefore, the state priorities shifted from heavy industry to oil and gas production for international consumption, banking and finance, marketing and importation of consumer goods.
Some changes were introduced prior to transition. For instance, in 1987 the Law on the State Enterprise was adopted, which allowed enterprises in the "productive" sphere to become self-financing. This meant that goods-producing enterprises had to meet their wage payment obligations from their own revenue.
While this change scarcely affected women, as women were still concentrated in the "nonproductive" sector, it did affect the pay gap between women and men. The nonproductive sector, encompassing such sectors as education and healthcare, was still financed from the state budget and was therefore at greater risk of budgetary cuts, which were inevitable in the difficult transitory period.
Ogloblin (1999) for instance wrote that due to the budget deficit and state's continuing neglect of the nonproductive sector, wages and salaries in this sphere were set at a significantly lower level than those set by self-financed enterprises (i.e. where men were highly concentrated). It is reasonable to expect that the transition contributed to an increase in the wage differentials between genders.