Trond Peterson University of California, Berkeley
When men and women do the same work for the same employer they are today for all practical purposes paid the same wages in mature market economies, notable the U.S. and Scandinavia. This may be the result of national legislative efforts starting in the 1960s. Firms no longer engage in one particular form of differential treatment of men and women. Former socialist societies in Eastern Europe were committed to the principles of gender equality and the gender wage gap generally was known under socialism to be smaller than in the West. What has happened after transition from socialism to market economies is however highly contested and not known. As a backlash against socialist ideologies gender equality and affirmative action efforts became weaker or non-existent and some researchers hence claim gender inequalities-along with race, ethnicity, and class-based inequalities-grew fast. This project will investigate the gender gaps in the workplace in former socialist economies. The PI hypothesizes first, that one main source of gender inequality in the workplace-namely, unequal pay for equal work-a source that has gradually disappeared in some mature market economies, have reemerged in post-socialist economies, even when the source, was absent during state socialism. Second, that there are sex differences in wage changes, promotions, and career advancement. The project will investigate these issues using unique firm-level data on about 1.1 million employees in the Czech Republic for the period 1998-2004.
Broader Impacts. The research will contribute to our understanding of the effects of large-scale social transformations, for example, the process by which major social change contributes to significant setbacks in previously achieved civil rights goals. Specifically, the way in which legislative and other efforts can impact the restoration of equal pay for equal work, which is what was once the case in former socialist economies, and is largely the case in the U.S. today.
