Gendered Transition: Post-Soviet Trends in Gender Wage Inequality among Young Full-Time Workers

Abstract

How does post-socialist transition to market economy change gender wage inequality? What processes are driving this change? This study undertakes to answer these questions by using longitudinal data on full-time workers in their early careers in four regions of the former Soviet Union. The main analytic tool is linear regression decomposition, with the change in within-region wage percentile as the dependent variable in the regression. During 4–5 years in the mid-1990s, men were significantly more likely than women to move up the wage hierarchy in Estonia and Latvia. The opposite development took place in the Sverdlovsk region in Russia and, to a lesser extent, in the Kharkiv region in Ukraine. Whether gender pay gap increased or declined, the wage mobility of gender-segregated occupations and sectors was a major contributor to the changes in gender wage stratification. At the same time, the labour force reshuffle during market transition disproportionately channelled one or the other gender group into occupations and sectors with lower earnings. The differential effect of family factors on the earnings of men and women does not explain any part of the gender gap in wage mobility. The impact of the gender difference in pay aspirations is likewise trivial.