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.
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. 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.
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. Some researchers conclude that it was partly due to these 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%. 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.
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. 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.