Gender, Work and Wages in the Soviet Union: A Legacy of Discrimination

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 wisdo…