Did gender affect access to jobs during the transition from state socialism to market capitalism in Eastern Europe and Russia? Using cross-national survey data from 1993 and 2000, this analysis tests several competing hypotheses regarding labor force participation during periods of economic restructuring and recession. In 1993, women, those with service sector experience, and those with high levels of education enjoyed a degree of protection from job loss. By 2000, however, sizeable and significant penalties existed for many women, particularly those with young children. These findings are consistent with the short-term predictions of segmentation theory, which center on differences between men and women's ability to hold onto jobs during periods of economic restructuring. As economies restructured and recovered from major economic losses, women became increasingly vulnerable in the nascent capitalist labor markets.
Simon Commander and Fabrizio Coricelli, eds., Unemployment, Restructuring and the Labor Market in Eastern Europe (World Bank: EDI Development Series, 1995); Branko Milanovic, "A Cost of Transition: 50 Million New Poor and Growing Inequality," Transition5:8 (1994): 1-4.
2.
See Victor Nee , "A Theory of Market Transition: From Redistribution to Markets in State Socialism," American Sociological Review56:3 ( 1989): 267-82; Yanjie Bian and and John Logan, "Market Transition and the Persistence of Power: The Changing Stratification System in Urban China," American Sociological Review. 61:5 (1996): 739-758; David Stark, "Recombinant Property in East European Capitalism," American Journal of Sociology101:4 (1996): 993-1027; Ivan Szelenyi and Eric Kostello, "The Market Transition Debate: Toward a Synthesis?" American Journal of Sociology. 101:4(1996): 645-67; Andrew Walder, "Local Government as Industrial Firms: An Organizational Analysis of China's Transition Economy ," American Journal of Sociology, 101:2 (1996): 263-301.
3.
Gil Eyal , Ivan Szeleneyi, and Eleanor Townsley, Making Capitalism Without Capitalists (New York: Verso, 2001); Andrew Walder, "Markets and Income Inequality in Rural China: Political Advantage in an Expanding Economy ," American Sociological Review67 (2002): 231-253; Xueguang Zhou, "Economic Transformation and Income Inequality in Urban China: Evidence from Panel Data," American Journal of Sociology105 ( 2000):1135-1174.
4.
See, for example, Eva Fodor, "Gender in Transition: Unemployment in Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia," East European Politics and Societies11:3 (1997): 470-500; Eva Fodor, Working Difference: Women's Working Lives in Hungary and Austria 1945-1995 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003); Susan Gal and Gail Kligman, The Politics of Gender After Socialism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000); Susan Gal and Gail Kligman, eds., Reproducing Gender: Politics, Publics, and Everyday Life After Socialism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001); Lynne Haney, "`But We Are Still Mothers': Gender and the Construction of Need in Post-Socialist Hungary ," Social Politics4:2 (1997): 208-244; Lynne Haney, Inventing the Needy: The Gender Transformation from Socialist Welfare to Welfare Capitalism in Hungary (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).
5.
Eva Fodor , "Smiling Women and Fighting Men: The Gender of the Communist Subject in State Socialist Hungary," Gender & Society16:2 (2002): 236-259; Renata Siemienska,"Continuity or Change? The Woman's Role in Polish Public Life Since the Fall of the Communist Regimes," Social Politics1 (1994): 326-334.
6.
Chris Corrin, Superwoman and the Double Burden: Women's Experience of Change in Central and Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union (Toronto : Second Story Press, 2002); Chris Corrin, Magyar Women: Hungarian Women's Lives 1960s-1990s (London : St. Martin's Press, 1993); Barbara Heyns and Ireneusz Bialecki , "Educational Inequality in Poland," In Yossi Shavit and Hans-Peter Blossfeld, eds., Persistent Inequality: Changing Educational Stratification in Thirteen Countries (Boulder : Westview Press, 1992).
7.
Fodor, "Gender."
8.
Corrin, Superwoman.
9.
According to time budget surveys collected during the socialist era, women's disproportionate share of private care work far exceeded the equivalent burden shouldered by their counterparts in Western capitalist societies. For examples of this research see Valentina Bodrova and Richard Anker, eds., Working Women in Socialist Countries: The Fertility Connection ( Geneva: ILO, 1985).
10.
Oecd, The OECD Economic Surveys, 1999-2000 .
11.
Ibid.
12.
Oecd, The OECD Employment Outlook Surveys, 1998.
13.
Susan Linz, "Do Job Rights Govern Employment Patterns in Transition Economies? " The American Economic Review85:2 (1995): 425-431.
14.
Ibid.
15.
Jacqueline Heinen , "Unemployment and Women's Attitudes in Poland ," Social Politics2( 1995): 91-110; Irene Kotowska, "Discrimination against Women in the Labor Market in Poland during the Transition to a Market Economy," Social Politics2 (1995): 76-90; Joanna Goven, "New Parliament, Old Discourse? The Parental Leave Debate in Hungary," In Susan Gal and Gail Kligman , eds., Reproducing Gender: Politics, Publics, and Everyday Life after Socialism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 286-306; Eleanora Zielinska, "Between Ideology, Politics, and Common Sense: The Discourse of Reproductive Rights in Poland," In Susan Gal and Gail Kligman, eds., Reproducing Gender: Politics, Publics, and Everyday Life after Socialism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 23-57.
16.
See Fodor, " Gender"; and Julia Szalai, "Conflicts of Gender and Class: Paradoxes of Women's Occupational Mobility in Post-1989 Hungary," In T. Van der Lippe and T. Van Dijk, eds., Women's Employment in Comparative Perspective (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 2001).
17.
Ruth Milkman , "Women's Work and Economic Crisis: Some Lessons of the Great Depresssion," The Review of Radical Political Economics8:1 (1976); and Ruth Milkman, "Organizing the Sexual Division of Labor: Historical Perspectives on `Women's Work' and the American Labor Movement," Socialist Review10:49(1980): 95-150.
18.
See Barbara Reskin and Heidi Hartmann, eds., Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job (Washington: National Academy, 1986); see also Ruth Milkman, Gender At Work: The Dynamics of Job Segregation by Sex During World War II ( Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1987).
19.
Jill Rubery, Women and Recession (New York: Routledge, 1988).
20.
Monica Fong and Gillian Paull, "Women's Economic Status in the Restructuring of Eastern Europe," In Valentine Moghadam, ed., Democratic Reform and the Position of Women in Transitional Economies ( Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 217-247.
21.
Major declines in mining, iron, steel, engineering, light industry, and textiles occurred as early as 1990 in Hungary. In Poland in 1990, employment in agriculture fell by 21%, and in manufacturing and construction by 10.7%. These figures are cited in Fong and Paull, "Women's Economic Status."
22.
Fodor, "Gender," 486.
23.
Gary Becker, The Economics of Discrimination (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1975); Sandra Black and Elizabeth Brainerd , "Importing Equality? The Impact of Globalization on Gender Discrimination," (National Bureau of Economic Research: Working Paper 9110, 2001).
24.
Irene Bruegel , "Women as a Reserve Army of Labour" Feminist Review3(1979): 12-23; see also Rubery, Women and Recession .
25.
See Jane Lewis, ed., Women and Social Policies in Europe: Work, Family, and the State ( Cheltenham: Edward Elger, 1993); Nancy Fraser, "After the Family Wage: Gender Equity and the Welfare State," Political Theory22 (1994): 591-618; Ann Orloff, "Gender In The Welfare State," American Review of Sociology22 (1996): 51-78; Diane Sainsbury, Gender, Equality, and Welfare States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
26.
Tanja Van der Lippe, "The effect of Individual and Institutional Constraints on Hours of Paid Work of Women," In Tanja Van der Lippe and Liset Van Dijk , eds., Women's Employment in Comparative Perspective (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 2001).
27.
See Gal and Kligman, The Politics of Gender; Heinen, "Unemployment"; Kotowska, "Discrimination"; and Zielinska , "Between Ideology."
28.
Malgorzata Fuszara, "New Gender Relations in Poland in the 1990s," In Susan Gal and Gail Kligman , eds., Reproducing Gender: Politics, Publics, and Everyday Life after Socialism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000); Mira Marody and Anna Giza-Poleszczuk, "Changing Images of Identity in Poland: From the Self-Sacrificing to the Self-Investing Woman," In Susan Gal and Gail Kligman, eds., Reproducing Gender: Politics, Publics and Everyday Life after Socialism (Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 2000 ); Zielinska "Between Ideology."
29.
Ivan Szelenyi and Donald Treiman, "Social Stratification in Eastern Europe after 1989: General Population Survey, 1993"; Ivan Szelenyi and Rebecca Emigh, "Poverty, Ethnicity and Gender During Transition in Eastern Europe: General Population Survey, 2000"
30.
In 1993, retirement age was 55 for women and 60 for men in Bulgaria, Hungary, and Russia and 60 for women and 65 for men in Poland. In 2000, retirement age was 55 for women and 60 for men in Bulgaria and Russia, 56 for women and 60 for men in Hungary, and 60 for women and 56 for men in Poland.
31.
D.G. Blanchflower and A.J. Oswald, "A Study of Labor Markets and Youth Unemployment in Eastern Europe," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS)499(1997). See also International Labor Organization, "World Employment Report 1998-1999: Employability in the Global Economy " (Geneva: ILO, 2001).
32.
The predicted probabilities are net effects based on the multivariate analyses described above.
33.
Having an employed spouse was a stronger predictor than being married. Therefore, I use having an employed spouse as the marital indicator.
34.
Between 1989 and 1993, Bulgaria experienced a 25% net decline in GDP, followed by modest growth between 1994 and 1995. In late 1996, Bulgaria experienced major declines in output and entered a period of economic crisis. Following a severe recession during 1996/1997, Bulgaria's GDP began to grow slowly in 1998. Hungary and Poland both experienced major declines in GDP between 1989 and 1994. Since 1994, however, both countries have experienced modest to significant annual growth. GDP declines in Russia were extensive. Between 1992 and 1996, Russia's economy shrunk to three-fifths of its former size, with annual GDP declines in the double digits. For a review of Russia's economic trajectory since 1989, see Theodore Gerber and Michael Hout, "More Shock than Therapy: Market Transition, Employment, and Income in Russia, 1991-1995 ," American Journal of Sociology104:1(1998): 1-50.
35.
In 1993, respondents aged 19-25 were significantly less likely to have a job in Bulgaria, Hungary, and Poland, and in 2000, in Bulgaria and Poland. While there was no effect for these workers in Hungary in 2000, young workers were significantly more likely to have a job in Russia in 2000. However, the important point here is that there was no significant interaction with sex in any country at any time point, suggesting that barriers to entry into the labor market were as significant for young men as for young women.
36.
Reported figures for Question 2 include the percentage of respondents who answered "No" to this question indicating they did not get their job back following maternity leave. Questions 1 and 2 were asked only of women who reported having a child who was born after 1985 living in the household. Questions 3-6 were asked only of women who reported having children under age 14 living in the household.
37.
A perceived willingness to work overtime may be a major advantage to men. Data on working hours in this region show significant numbers of employees are expected to work beyond the 40-hour workweek. The average hours worked in every country significantly exceeds averages in the EU and the United States, and 17-25% of employees-predominantly male-work 50 or more hours per week.
38.
ILO Survey Data (1993) cited in Ariane Pailhe, "Gender Discrimination in Central Europe during the Systemic Transition," Economics of Transition8:2 (2000): 505-535.
39.
Emily Stoper and Emilia Laneva, "The Status of Women in New Market Economies: Democratization and Women's Employment Policy in Post-Communist Bulgaria," Connecticut Journal of International Law9 (1996).
40.
Coopers & Lybrand, "Hungary: Gender Issues in the Transition to a Market Economy," Bureau of Private Enterprise (USAID: Office of Women in Development, 1991).
41.
Labor codes in most countries prohibit sex-specific job advertisements. For example, the Polish Act Concerning Employment, passed in 1997, stipulated that "[N]otifications by employers for job vacancies … must not include requirements of a discriminatory character on account of, inter alia, sex." Cited in International Labor Organization, "World Employment Report 1998-1999: Employability in the Global Economy ," (Geneva: ILO, 2001).
42.
An example from Poland reads: "[Agency] is searching for attractive hostesses to promote brand name products in Warsaw, must be at least 170 cm. tall, between the ages of 17 and 25 and approved by SANEPID as disease free." This job listing was cited in Fogo, "Sex and Age Discrimination: Why Violations May Be Bad for Your Health ," Warsaw Business Journal (December 2, 2002 ).
43.
EBRD ratings; Unicef, Women in Transition (Florence: UNICEF, 1999).
44.
Van der Lippe, "The Effect of Individual and Institutional Constraints."
45.
In 2000, 24% of Polish households included at least one child under age six compared to 17% of Bulgarian households, 20% of Hungarian households, and 18% of Russian households. However, only 9% of Polish households actually received such benefits. In contrast, 33% of Bulgarian households, 43% of Hungarian households, and 30% of Russian households received some type of child and/or parental transfers. Figures are based on author's calculations.
46.
See Zielinska, " Between Ideology"; Marody and Giza-Poleszczuk, "Changing Images"; Fuszara , "New Gender Relations."
47.
See Heinen, " Unemployment"; Kotowska, "Discrimination"; Zielinska , "Between Ideology."
48.
Ivan Szelenyi and Gail Kligman, Poverty, Ethnicity, and Gender in Market Transition (unpublished manuscript).
49.
All countries signed the United Nations Convention on Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in 1998, and all currently have sex-specific anti-discrimination clauses in their labor codes.
50.
International Labor Organization, "World Employment Report1998-1999: Employability in the Global Economy" (Geneva: ILO, 2001).
51.
In some instances, government officials have sanctioned discriminatory behavior by employers. For instance, in February 1993, Russia's Labor Minister, Gennady Melikyar responded to questions about women's unemployment by asking, "Why should we employ women when men are out of work?" This quote was documented by Womack in The Independent (London, March 21, 1993).
