Gender, Work and Wages in the Soviet Union

Transcription

1 Gender, Work and Wages in the Soviet Union

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3 Gender, Work and Wages in the Soviet Union A Legacy of Discrimination Katarina Katz Research Fellow Department of Economics Stockholm University Sweden

4 Katarina Katz 2001 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 0LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act First published 2001 by PALGRAVE Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE is the new global academic imprint of St. Martin s Press LLC Scholarly and Reference Division and Palgrave Publishers Ltd (formerly Macmillan Press Ltd). ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI / This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Katz, Katarina, 1953 Gender, work and wages in the Soviet Union : a legacy of discrimination / Katarina Katz. p. cm. Presented as the author s thesis (doctoral Gothenburg) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Wages Women Soviet Union. 2. Women Employment Soviet Union. 3. Sex discrimination in employment Soviet Union. I. Title. HD6166.K '2947 dc

5 To my parents

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7 Contents List of Tables List of Figures List of Abbreviations Acknowledgements x xiv xv xvi 1 Introduction The roots of the present in the past The history of the study Underlying assumptions Western research on the employment and earnings of 6 Soviet women 1.5 Outline of the book 9 2 Gender, Discrimination and Western Economic Theory Gender wage differentials Neoclassical and ef ciency wage theory Why do women get lower pay? Occupational segregation Discrimination Modelling wages and wage discrimination 37 Appendix 46 3 Soviet Wages and Salaries Issues in Soviet wage formation The post-war Soviet wage system Wages by occupation and sector Not just the money wage 70 4 Women and Men in Taganrog and in the USSR The data Gender and age composition of the sample Education Female labour force participation Working hours Segregation by gender Children, housework and employment 101 vii

8 viii Contents 4.8 The wages of Soviet women and men: a rst look 109 Appendix The Wages of Soviet Women and Men The raw materials of analysis ± sample and variables Wage functions for hourly wage rates Monthly wages Results from the decomposition Beyond Taganrog `Productive' and `non-productive work' 145 Appendix Pay and Education Introduction: The debate over `wage-levelling' Pay and education in the USSR. What is known? Methodological issues Results from the survey Was there an of cial policy of `wage-levelling'? Demand and supply of educated labour in the USSR What determines the choice of education? Over- and underquali cation of staff Conclusions 196 Appendix Taganrog Post-USSR: Patriarchy, Poverty, Perspectives Introduction Women in post-reform Russia Russian survey data Gender and employment in Russia Unemployment The gender earnings gap Estimates of wage and earnings models 228 Appendix Summary and Conclusions The `Woman Question' in Soviet ideology Economic theory and statistical methods Soviet priorities, wages and gender The male/female wage differential Rewards to education or `levelling'? The Soviet legacy of discrimination Women in post-soviet Russia 246

9 Contents ix Notes References Index

10 List of Tables Table 2.1 Female/male wage ratios in 1960 and Table 2.2 Segregation, participation and wage ratios, OECD 12 countries Table 2.3 Female/male earnings ratio adjusted for hours 14 (in per cent) and percentile position of the female average in the male wage distribution Table 3.1 Relative basic wage under normal working conditions 61 Table 3.2 Bonuses as a percentage of industrial workers' wages 65 Table 3.3 Relative monthly earnings by branch of industry 66 (as per cent of average industrial wage) Table 3.4 Relative average monthly wages for workers and 69 employees in different sectors Table 4.1 Life expectancy at birth 85 Table 4.2 The percentage of women among students in higher 88 education Table 4.3 Female and male labour force participation rates, 94 16±64 years of age, 1989 Table 4.4 Percentages of women in different sectors 98 Table 4.5 Percentages of women in selected non-manual 101 occupations Table 4.6 Housework done by men and women in Russian 106 cities, 1965±68 Table 4.7 Housework and paid work done by men and women 106 in Pskov, 1986 Table 4.8 Housework and paid work done by working men and 107 women in Taganrog, 1989 Table 4.9 Housework and paid work done by urban, employed 108 men and women aged 18 and above in Pskov and Finland Table 4.10 Average monthly wage (after tax) by type of 112 education (all household members with non-zero wage the previous month) Table 4.11 Average monthly wage (after tax), by job level 113 Table 4.12 Average monthly pre-tax wages for workers and 114 employees in different branches of the state sector x

11 List of Tables xi Table A4.1 Age distribution in percentages of adult (aged 20+) 117 men and women among all household members (All), among respondents (Resp.), in Taganrog and in the Russian urban population Table A4.2 Education of employed men and women among all 118 household members (All), among respondents (Resp.) and according to census data for Taganrog and the RSFSR Table A4.3 Wages from the state sector and total labour income 119 (including income from co-operatives and self-employment) of the sample of all household members and of respondents Table 5.1 Comparison of average working hours reported as 123 `normal' hours and calculated from time-use data Table 5.2 Model A: hourly wages of men and women 129 Table 5.3 Model A of monthly wages 136 Table 5.4 Decomposition of the gender wage gap according 140 to Model A Table 5.5 Decomposition of the gender wage gap according 140 to Model B Table 5.6 Estimates of models of average monthly wages in 148 branches of the economy Table A5.1 De nition and means of variables 151 Table A5.2 Imputed years of schooling (edyrs) for different 153 levels of education Table A5.3 Comparison of main respondents with other 154 household members Table A5.4 Model B (without part-time variables) 158 Table A5.5 Variable means for Soviet and sample workers and 160 employees for Model C Table 6.1 Models C±E for hourly wages 171 Table 6.2 Models C±E of monthly wages 172 Table 6.3A Hourly wages for men, Models E±I 174 Table 6.3B Hourly wages for women, Models E±I 175 Table 6.4A Monthly wages for men, Models E±I 176 Table 6.4B Monthly wages for women, Models E±I 177 Table 6.5A Hourly wages for men, Models I±L 178 Table 6.5B Hourly wages for women, Models I±L 178 Table 6.6A Monthly wages for men, Models I±L 179 Table 6.6B Monthly wages for women, Models I±L 179 Table 6.7 Models I, J, K and L 180

12 xii List of Tables Table 6.8A Table 6.8B Table 6.9A Table 6.9B Table 6.10 Table 6.11 Table 6.12 Table A6.1 Table 7.1 Table 7.2 Table 7.3 Table 7.4 Table 7.5 Table 7.6 Table 7.7 Table 7.8 Table A7.1 Table A7.2 Percentage wage differential over unskilled workers with incomplete secondary school, for selected groups: hourly wages of men Percentage wage differential over unskilled workers with incomplete secondary school, for selected groups: hourly wages of women Percentage wage differential relative to unskilled workers with incomplete secondary school, for selected groups: monthly wages of men Percentage wage differential relative to unskilled workers with incomplete secondary school, for selected groups: monthly wages of women Average education premia, per year of study, as a percentage of wages Proportion of employed specialists with different professional training working as blue-collar workers Education of staff in selected occupations, 1970±89 Estimates of hourly wages with education/job-type combinations Self-de ned main occupation of men aged 16±59 and women aged 16±54 in the samples of 1989 and 1993/4 Occupation of mothers according to age of youngest child Percentage women among the employed in economic sectors Percentage men and women with entrepreneurial or ITD incomes, Taganrog 1993/4 Unemployment rates, 1992±98 Ratio of female to male earnings Model of 1989 monthly wages and 1993/4 monthly earnings Decomposition of the gender gap in monthly wages, 1989, and earnings, 1993 Distribution of male and female workforce by sector in Taganrog and the RSFSR/Russian Federation Average monthly wages for workers and employees in different branches of the economy in percentages of the average wage and the female/male wage ratios

13 List of Tables xiii Table A7.3 Non-response of men and women aged 18 to 235 pension age, 1993/4 Table A7.4 Usual hours of work per week of men and women and 1993/4 Table A7.5 De nition and means of variables in wage or earning 236 models

14 List of Figures Figure 3.1 Education of the workforce in different branches. 69 Number with higher, secondary specialist or PTU education per 1,000 employed Figure 3.2 Percentage who consider a given factor `absolutely 74 necessary' for a job to be suitable Figure 4.1 The proportion of women to men in the sample and 85 according to census data for Taganrog and the RSFSR urban population Figure 4.2 The education of employed men and women in the 89 USSR, 1989 Figure 4.3 Job types of male and female respondents 100 Figure 6.1 Relative wages in Taganrog, 1968± Figure 7.1 Chart of labour market positions 210 Figure 7.2 Numbers of men and women employed in 1989 and 212 change in economically active population, 1989±98 Figure 7.3 Male and female participation rates, Russia, 1989± Figure A7.1 Employment rates for men and women, RSFSR 232 census and Taganrog sample Figure A7.2 Labour force participation rates for men and women, 232 in the Russian Federation, 1993, and Taganrog sample, 1993/4 xiv

15 List of Abbreviations Goskomstat ITD ITR MOP PTU RSFSR SSUZ USSR VUZ Goskomstat SSSR, the Soviet Statistical Agency, Goskomstat Rossii (Rossiiskoi Federatsii), the Statistical Agency of the Russian Federation Individual'naia trudovaia deiatel'nost', individual labour activity Inzhenerno-tekhnicheskie rabotniki, engineering-technical staff Mladshii obsluzhivaiushchii personal, junior service staff Professional'no-tekhnicheskoe uchilishche, technical-vocational school Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic Spetsial'noe srednee uchebnoe zavedenie, specialised secondary educational institution Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Soviet Union Vysshchee uchebnoe zavedenie, institution for higher education xv

16 Acknowledgements A work that has been carried on over a number of years draws on the knowledge, advice and encouragement of a great number of people. As explained in chapter 1, my dissertation project of analysing Soviet wage data would have been impossible without the support of Anastasia Posadskaya and Natalia Rimashevskaya, Institute for Socio-Economic Population Studies (ISEPS), Ludmila Nivorozhkina, University of Rostov and my two thesis advisers, Johan LoÈ nnroth and Anders Klevmarken. I also thank the Swedish Council for Social Research, the Swedish Institute and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for the necessary funding. With a thesis task as broad as this, I was lucky to have two advisers, with different elds of expertise but similar patience in reading and improving endless piles of manuscript. I am indebted also to so many other friends and colleagues in the Department of Econolmics at the University of GoÈ teborg that I can only mention some. Wlodek Bursztyn and BjoÈrn Gustafsson provided advice and support through the whole venture, Lennart Flood lled in gaps in my econometrics. I thank Alastair McAuley ± who acted as faculty discussant for the thesis ± and John Micklewright, Inga Persson, Elena Glinskaya, referees and editors of the Cambridge Journal of Economics and Labour Economics for many helpful comments and advice. Permission from Oxford University Press to use materials which have been published in the Cambridge Journal of Economics, vol. 21:4 (July 1997) in chapter 5 is gratefully acknowledged. Tables 2.1 and 2.2 are reprinted from International Review of Comparative Public Policy, vol. 3, S. L. Willborn, `Women's Wages: Stability and Change in Six Industrialised Countries', p. 2. # 1991 with permission from Elsevier Science. Without the interest and encouragement of my friends I would probably have given up halfway from thesis to book. Special thanks go to Irene Bruegel and Kent Kjellgren. I owe a lot to all the Russian friends and colleagues who have offered time, information, Russian tea and hospitality, among them Anastasia Posadskaya, Elena Mezentseva and Marina Baskakova at the Moscow Centre for Gender Studies, Professor Rimashevskaya, Olga Vershinskaya, Marina Pisklakova and others at the ISEPS and, above all, Ludmila Nivorozhkina, who has remained a source of advice and encouragement for many years. I learnt much from the late Dr Marina Mozhina and from the colleagues in her laboratory. xvi

17 Acknowledgements xvii The Swedish Council for Social Research and the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences provided the opportunity to write chapter 7. I thank Louise Grogan for a lot of valuable information and comments and Lena BarregaÊ rd for excellent research assistance. I have made every effort to contact the copyright holders for permission to use their material. It remains to say that none of those mentioned are responsible for remaining errors or for the views expressed in the book.