Russian Women Have More Schooling Than Men but Earn 30 Percent Less
Differences in jobs and hours explain part of the gap, but most remains unexplained.
compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com · Inequality and social stratification in Russia during the Putin regime: From market transition to war on UkraineRussian women have more schooling than men, yet they take home about 30% less pay each month.
The gap was about 35% in the 1990s and about 30% since the 2000s. That is large by the standards of wealthy Western democracies. Russia ranked near the top globally for women's employment, a pattern dating to Soviet times that continues today.
Researchers who tracked wages from 2004 to 2018 found that men and women work in different jobs and industries, which accounts for 20 to 35% of the gap. Differences in hours worked explain only 6 to 10%. Women's higher schooling shrinks the gap.
Most of the difference remains unexplained, which researchers say could reflect discrimination by employers.
Questions people ask
Is Russia's pay gap bigger than America's?
Roughly yes, but the measures differ. The Russian figure is mean monthly wages for all workers, while the common U.S. figure covers full-time workers only. With that caveat, the U.S. full-time gap of about 16 to 17% is smaller than Russia's roughly 30% monthly gap, which researchers describe as large compared with wealthy democracies.
Why do Russian women have more education than men?
The review itself only notes that women have exceeded men in schooling for decades. As general historical context outside that review, scholars point to Soviet-era access to universities and technical schools and the expectation that women would both study and work, a pattern that continued after 1991.
Do women just work fewer hours?
Hours matter, but only a little. Differences in time worked explain about 6 to 10% of the monthly gap, according to wage data from 2004 to 2018. The rest is not about the clock, since Russia has long had very high female employment by global standards.