‘Equal Pay for Equal Work’: Women’s Wages in Soviet Russia

Abstract

This chapter examines the impact of the Bolshevik policy of ‘equal pay for equal work’ on women’s wages in the Soviet Union during the 1920s and 1930s. It takes a close look at the findings of a number of detailed investigations into industrial wage rates conducted in the Soviet Union in the interwar period to determine the extent to which the policy of ‘equal pay’ was pursued in practice. A wage gap undoubtedly existed and this chapter asks if Soviet women earned less because they were less skilled, worked fewer hours and did not produce as much as men or if women’s lower wages can be accounted for by more structural factors evident in the labour force in general and in the grading system for the payment of wages and salaries in particular.