ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the Estonian experience of gender inequalities in the labour market to cultural, structural and institutional theories of gender inequality in the post-socialist labour market. In Estonia, the gender gap in employment is lower than the EU-28 average, due to higher levels of female employment. The welfare regime, employment relations, and educational, family and cultural systems all shape women's labour market responses to changing global market pressures. In Estonia, men with university education outnumbered women in the working-age population until 1959, but the 1979 and 1989 Soviet censuses reported that women's educational level was higher than men's and increased more rapidly. As in other developed Western and post-socialist countries, the position of women in the Estonian labour market is shaped by socio-economic, political and cultural trends. The Estonian transition to the market – characterized by so-called shock therapy – was aimed to radically deregulate employment relations and open the economy to the impact of market forces.
