ABSTRACT
Women still earn less than men. Although the statistics are inadequate, they suggest that the disparity between men’s and women’s earnings in the USSR is of the same order of magnitude as that to be found in the more industrialised economies of Western Europe. The status of women, in the labour market and in society as a whole, has not been an issue of as great political concern in the USSR as in some Western countries, but it has attracted the attention of a number of Soviet economists and sociologists. Women are too often employed in unrewarding and unsatisfying jobs in the Soviet Union because this is regarded as part of the natural order of things. It is the low pay and generally poor conditions associated with traditional ‘women’s work’ that have led some Soviet women to choose to work in physically exacting jobs, for example, in the construction industry.
