Gender, Work and Wages in the Soviet Union

The plight of women in post-reform Russia has its roots in the combination of the new, untrammelled market system and the old legacy of discrimination. The Soviet Union was the first country to give women equal rights and equal pay, but this was not carried through in practice. This is the first study to apply modern econometrics to survey-data collected in the USSR. Analysis of data from Russia shows how legislative equality hid actual discrimination. Katz also challenges the conventional wisdom that, for ideological reasons, Soviet manual workers were favoured over the highly educated. Gender, Work and Wages in the Soviet Union includes a critical survey of economic theories of gender and wages and the Soviet wage-system. The final chapter brings the debate up to date by examining how old and new mechanisms of gender inequality interact in post-Soviet Russia.

'Katarina Katz has written a comprehensive account of the changing patterns of pay differentiation in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia, with particular regard to educational and gender differences, which is rigorous, systematic and, above all, accessible to the non-economist. On the basis of the rigorous analysis of primary data, the book dispels many of the myths about soviet egalitarianism and many of the illusions about the liberating force of the market economy. The book will be essential reading for researchers and students concerned with the changing social structure of Russia in transition.' - Professor Simon Clarke, University of Warwick '...the book is an important contribution to the literature on the Soviet labor market and wage structure.' - Industrial and L abor Relations Review

KATARINA KATZ is a Research Fellow in the Department of Economics at Stockholm University.