1. Presented by: Antonina Kochetkova, Edoardo Vanni and Irem Osmanoğlu
Women in transition: changes in gender wage differentials in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union by Elizabeth Brainerd
Presented by:
Antonina Kochetkova, Edoardo Vanni and Irem Osmanoğlu

2. Main questions posed by the author:
• How have women in formerly socialist countries been affected by the introduction of market reforms? • Is the introduction of market reforms in formerly socialist countries a gender-neutral policy?
How presentation will benefit audience: Adult learners are more interested in a subject if they know how or why it is important to them.
Presenter’s level of expertise in the subject: Briefly state your credentials in this area, or explain why participants should listen to you.

3. • To answer these questions, recent household surveys and published data were used for a wide range of countries, including FSU republics Ukraine and Russia and East European countries of Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, and the Czech and Slovak Republics.
• Uniqueness of the study: analysis of comparable surveys for each countries before and after the initial period of reforms, using a consistent definition of the wage gap between men and women so that results across countries can be compared.
• Examining the gender wage gap within one to two years of the introduction of market reforms in each country gives us confidence that the changes observed reflect the impact of reforms that took effect quickly (wage and price decentralization), rather than the impact of policies that were implemented with varying speeds across countries (privatization and enterprise restructuring).
• Focus on changes in relative wages and brief discussion of labor force participation (but this paper ignores other aspects of the changes in women’s daily lives that are beyond its scope).
Lesson descriptions should be brief.

4. Labor Market Institutions and female labor market performance under socialism
The Soviet model of labor market institutions:
Central planners assigned wages by establishing an occupational wage scale within each industry, and wages were set as a multiple of the base wage (the wage of the lowest-grade occupation);
Pervasive membership in official unions (little role in wage determination, they acted as a “transmission belt” for Communist Party policies);
Unemployment was not officially recognized (in some countries it could lead to criminal charges and imprisonment);
Severely limited geographical mobility due to housing shortages and an internal passport system.
Example objectives
At the end of this lesson, you will be able to:
Save files to the team Web server.
Move files to different locations on the team Web server.
Share files on the team Web server.

5. Labor Market Institutions and female labor market performance under socialism
Similar labor market characteristics across countries:
Open excess demand for labor (due to soft budget constraints faced by enterprises and the emphasis on plan fulfillment rather than cost minimization);
Narrow wage differentials between occupations, with a bias favoring manual workers;
Relatively low levels and slow growth of wages.
Example objectives
At the end of this lesson, you will be able to:
Save files to the team Web server.
Move files to different locations on the team Web server.
Share files on the team Web server.

6. The economic status of women under socialism
•Precepts for the increased female labor force participation after the introduction of central planning:
Explicit guarantee of the right to equal pay for equal work
Generous maternity leaves
Extensive provision of day care centers
Relatively low average wages
•Result: 80 % of female working-age population was active in the labor market
Example objectives
At the end of this lesson, you will be able to:
Save files to the team Web server.
Move files to different locations on the team Web server.
Share files on the team Web server.

7. The economic status of women under socialism
Example objectives
At the end of this lesson, you will be able to:
Save files to the team Web server.
Move files to different locations on the team Web server.
Share files on the team Web server.

8. The economic status of women under socialism
• The occupational and industrial distribution of female employment was skewed toward areas such as health and education, retail trade, and semi-skilled professional occupations • Women were also highly represented in manufacturing (e.g.: in Russia, 48% in 1990) • Overall, occupational segregation in Eastern Europe was lower, on average, than in the advanced industrialized nations
Example objectives
At the end of this lesson, you will be able to:
Save files to the team Web server.
Move files to different locations on the team Web server.
Share files on the team Web server.

9. Market reforms and changing labor market institutions in the early 1990s
• Typical market reforms: wage and price liberalization, trade liberalization, privatization of state-owned enterprises and legal reforms • Across countries, the reforms have differed less in their elements than in the speed with which they were implemented (e.g.: Russia vs Ukraine)
Example objectives
At the end of this lesson, you will be able to:
Save files to the team Web server.
Move files to different locations on the team Web server.
Share files on the team Web server.

10. Market reforms and changing labor market institutions in the early 1990s
Labor market institutions have changed dramatically and become much more diverse across countries:
The centralized wage-setting system has been abandoned and replaced with new arrangements ranging from decentralized plant-level negotiations to collective bargaining;
Most countries introduced some form of tax-based incomes policy early in the transition to restrain wage growth, but many had abandoned these policies by 1994 or 1995;
The role of unions varies widely across countries and across industries within countries. Newly formed independent unions are competing with the successor unions to the former official trade unions for worker representation;
Some countries have maintained high minimum wages while others have allowed inflation to erode the minimum wage to extremely low levels;
Changes in the real value of the minimum wage will affect women’s wages more than men’s, because women have lower wages on average.
Example objectives
At the end of this lesson, you will be able to:
Save files to the team Web server.
Move files to different locations on the team Web server.
Share files on the team Web server.

11. Market reforms and changing labor market institutions in the early 1990s
Example objectives
At the end of this lesson, you will be able to:
Save files to the team Web server.
Move files to different locations on the team Web server.
Share files on the team Web server.

12. How might the changing labor market institutions affect women?
Factors that influence the gender wage gap:
1) Factors related to changes in the overall wage structure;
2) Changes in gender-specific factors such as discrimination and relative levels of labor market skills.
The expected widening of the wage structure following wage decentralization will penalize women relative to men, since prior to reforms women disproportionately occupied the lower part of the wage distribution. On the other hand, it is likely that market valuations of skills will change, and such changes may favor women relative to men.
Women’s relative wages will also be affected by changes in gender discrimination, although it is unclear whether it will increase or decrease.
Example objectives
At the end of this lesson, you will be able to:
Save files to the team Web server.
Move files to different locations on the team Web server.
Share files on the team Web server.

13. How might the changing labor market institutions affect women?
Changes in labor force participation are difficult to predict:
Declining real wages for women should reduce female labor force participation, since women will substitute toward home production as the opportunity cost of home production falls;
The widening of the wage structure may also enable families at the upper end of wage distribution to have single-earner families, so female labor force participation may drop;
On the other hand, the “added worker effect” could induce women who were out of the labor force to re-enter it if their spouses become unemployed or suffer a real wage decline.
Example objectives
At the end of this lesson, you will be able to:
Save files to the team Web server.
Move files to different locations on the team Web server.
Share files on the team Web server.

14. Data
-Micro data from the 1980s was limited, but researchers could use a surprising amount of household survey information from Eastern Europe and the USSR.
-In Table 1 we can see the household surveys with the dates the wage information refers to, the years when the surveyed countries implemented reforms such as price and wage liberalization. The number of observations is not the full sample size, but the one used in the empirical work in this paper.

16. -Table 2 shows the means of the demographic variables of the data sets
-Table 2 shows the means of the demographic variables of the data sets. Men and women of retirement age are excluded. Retirement age is 60 years for men and 55 years for women in all the surveyed countries except Poland, where it is 64 for men and 59 for women. The results for Estonia and Slovenia are not strictly comparable since they do not limit the samples to any particular age group.
-This analysis uses monthly wages unadjusted for hours worked. If on average women work fewer hours than men, female wages will be understated to be relative to male ones. Only a change of the relative hours worked by the two sexes can affect the gender wage differential change. Relative hours worked seem to have changed considering the increase of unemployment and the use of shortened working hours.

17. -As in some countries female unemployment is higher than male one, and in others the situation is the opposite, there is no consistent pattern in terms of female and male unemployment rates. Overall, the influence of these trends on women is unclear.
-These results are focused on relative wages. The measures used here do not take into account the effect of declining force participation and rising unemployment on women’s welfare. The evidence on changes in female labor force participation suggests that in most countries the declining participation does not account for a large proportion of the change in female relative wages.

19. FEMALE WAGE RATIOS IN TRANSITION COUNTRIES
After the collapse of Soviet Union, women’s wages unambiguously improved relative to men’s wages in all East European countries according to analyses and survey data. However, on the contrary of this data information Russia and Ukraine had a big fall in women wage ratios on the distribution since market reforms were introduced. (Table 3) While women’s wages are increasing in transition countries, Poland had the highest women wage ratio with a dramatic increase in its labor market according to survey data and is followed by Slovak Republic.
This table gives us a comparable result that can be observed with Scandinavian countries.

20. The mean and median female percentages in both Russia and Ukraine changed a bit as indicated in the table. This difference in female/male wage ratio gives an explanation that gender-specific factors affected labour market outcome of women in Russia and Ukraine.
In contrast, the mean and median female percentages in all East European countries rose significantly in the years following the introduction of market reforms.
Thus, it can be said that women’s labour market skills improved in these countries relative to men’s skills. Or put it differently, discrimination among female and male fell.

22. Explaining Changes in Relative Wages: The Role of the Wage Structure and Labour Market Institutions
After the introduction of market reforms in these countries inequality in female/male ratio has changed. Table 4 shows clearly the changes and in addition comparison of inequality in US and UK.
The wage structure enlarged seriously in the East European countries for both gender, however, it has increased dramatically in the countries of the former Soviet Union.
Wage inequality in Ukraine and Russia is remarkably high.
Increase in wage distribution is half in Poland and Hungary, more symmetric in Czech and Slovak Republic.

23. The wage structure widened more in Russia and Ukraine. Why?
Because changing labour market institutions evolved in East European countries, replacing centralized wage-setting with new institutions in new ways, the imposition of tax-based income policies, the indexation of minimum wages, the emergence of collective bargaining arrangements. On the contrary, in Russia and Ukraine, they have decentralized wage setting systems and had unequal wage distribution.
The different changes might be related to the differing initial levels of macroeconomic disequilibrium. Although reforms in former Soviet Union in late 1980s.
On the other hand, increase in education stimulates to increase women wage ratio. (Figures 3-4)

27. Decomposing the Change in the Female-Male Wage Differential
Reasons for the change in female/male wages are related to gender- specific factors, observable skills and discrimination.
This was first developed by Juhn, Murphy and Pierce in Since then, it was used in the US by Blau and Kahn. They have elaborated some formulas to explore gender wage differences regarding education, observed skills, gaps and unobserved prices.
Education: is explained with regards to socialism
Gap: changes in the relative position of women in the male residual wage distribution.

29. Those calculations refer to gender wage gap regarding education, observed prices effect, gap effect and unobserved prices
That calculation is shown in the Table 6 as a result of indexes to reflect changes in relative labour demand and supply for each country. (6)

30. Changes in Female Employment and Labour Force Participation
Changes in the relative labour supply of men and women will affect the gender wage gap.
The effect of between-sector demand shifts on relative labour can be measured. (Table 6)
All of these demand and supply figures explain the change in the gender wage gap on those countries.
The net supply of women fell while that of men fell in Russia on the contrary in Hungary and Poland.

31. In Eastern Germany low skilled women drop out of the labour force disproportionably during transition and it caused the rise of relative female wage.
However in Czech Republic, the decline in male workers reduced from 87.8% to 83.6%, for female; 85%  78.9%
In Bulgaria, Russia, Poland and Ukraine the percentage of decline in male labour force participation is more than female
In summary, differing outcomes between East European Countries and former Soviet Republics regarding the change in labour market discrimination against women have occurred during transition
In addition, East European firms have more competition than Russian and Ukrainian counterparts.

33. CONCLUSION
In conclusion, in spite of the difficulties in transition to market economy, women benefited relative to men in the labour market.
The changing economic status of women and shift in the wage distribution and introduction of market reforms have affected positively women in market in those six East European countries.
However, in Russia and Ukraine, women are affected negatively regarding the growth of women participation rates in labour market. There is still some discrimination in women wage distribution.