Adapting to Russia's New Labour Market Gender and Employment Strategy (Routledgecurzon History of Russia and Eastern Europe)

Sarah Ashwin and her team of Russian sociologists have done it again, brought together their years of research into the...

Author: Sarah Ashwin

12 downloads 745 Views 2MB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!
Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

Sarah Ashwin and her team of Russian sociologists have done it again, brought together their years of research into the gender fall out of the Soviet collapse, exploring survival strategies in the face of an unprecedented economic collapse—how and when women have proven to be more flexible and resilient than men, how men have held on to better paid employment, but when they fail, how they have often subsided into a quagmire of demoralisation. Here we have the perfect combination of surveys and case material, sensitive to general trends but also to the complex human response to adversity. Essential reading for all those who want to get beyond distorting stereotypes and sensational depictions of Russian life today. Michael Burawoy, University of California, Berkeley Provides very interesting analyses of the ways individuals are dealing with the deep problems during the restructuring of the Russian labour market, and the gender differences in relation to individual strategies. It’s an excellent book which will provide students, researchers and policy makers in social sciences with a new insight into the contradictions and problems of actual development in Russia. Birgit Pfau-Effinger, University of Hamburg

Adapting to Russia’s New Labour Market Economic reform in post-Soviet Russia produced a devastating decline in living standards, and widespread insecurity and uncertainty. This was felt most strongly in the sphere of employment, as enterprises—once the centre of Soviet social life—were thrown into crisis. How are men and women coping with the transformation of the Russian labour market that has occurred since the collapse of communism? Unemployment was widely expected to have a ‘female face’ and it was anticipated that women would be the main losers from reform. But these predictions have not been realised, and men have received increasing attention as it has become clear that many of them are finding it difficult to adjust to new conditions. This book aims to identify and explain gender differences in responses to Russia’s transformed economic environment, and to reveal the way in which these influence both labour market outcomes, and the well being of men and women. The analysis is based on original research conducted by Sarah Ashwin and her team of experienced Russian sociologists. Through a series of qualitative interviews, they followed the progress of 120 men and 120 women through the turbulent Russian labour market between 1999 and 2001. Adapting to Russia’s New Labour Market includes chapters examining: the way in which the gender norms inherited from the Soviet era have influenced responses to transition; sex segregation and discrimination in the labour market; gender differences in work orientations and behaviour; who benefits from networks, and which life events are most likely to initiate downward trajectories. Scholarly, yet lively, this collection offers a valuable resource for students and scholars of Russian Studies, Gender Studies and Sociology, as well as anyone interested in understanding the human dimension of the transformation of the Russian labour market. Sarah Ashwin is a Reader in the Industrial Relations Department at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She has been doing field research in Russia since 1991. Her main areas of interest are workers’ organization, trade unions, and gender relations. Her publications include Gender, State and Society in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia (Routledge, 2000).

Routledge Contemporary Russia and Eastern Europe Series (formerly RoutledgeCurzon Russia and Eastern Europe Series) 1 Liberal Nationalism in Central Europe Stefan Auer 2 Civil-Military Relations in Russia and Eastern Europe David J.Betz 3 The Extreme Nationalist Threat in Russia The growing influence of Western rightist ideas Thomas Parland 4 Economic Development in Tatarstan Global markets and a Russian region Leo McCann 5 Adapting to Russia’s New Labour Market Gender and employment behaviour Edited by Sarah Ashwin 6 Building Democracy and Civil Society East of the Elbe Essays in Honour of Edmund Mokrzycki Edited by Sven Eliaeson 7 The Telengits of Southern Siberia Landscape, Religion and Knowledge in Motion Agnieszka Halemba

Adapting to Russia’s New Labour Market Gender and employment behaviour

Edited by Sarah Ashwin

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2006 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon Oxon OX 14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to http://www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk/.” © 2006 selection and editorial matter, Sarah Ashwin; individual chapters, the contributors All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-31313-5 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN10:0-415-34960-5 (Print Edition) ISBN13:9-78-0-415-34960-4 (Print Edition)

Taylor & Francis Group is the Academic Division of T&F Informa plc.

Contents Illustrations

vii

Notes on contributors

ix

Acknowledgements

x

1 Dealing with devastation in Russia: men and women compared SARAH ASHWIN 2 The post-Soviet gender order: imperatives and implications SARAH ASHWIN 3 Sex segregation and discrimination in the new Russian labour market IRINA KOZINA AND ELENA ZHIDKOVA 4 Work orientations and employment behaviour: gender differences? SARAH ASHWIN, IRINA KOZINA, IRINA POPOVA AND ELENA ZHIDKOVA 5 Gender differences in employment behaviour in Russia’s new labour market SVETLANA YAROSHENKO, ELENA OMEL’CHENKO, NATAL’YA GONCHAROVA AND OLGA ISSOUPOVA 6 Who benefits from networks? IRINA TARTAKOVSKAYA AND SARAH ASHWIN 7 Critical life events and downward trajectories MARINA ILYINA 8 Conclusion SARAH ASHWIN Index

1 30 52 80

122

149 175 193

200

Illustrations Tables

1.1 Educational level of respondents at the final stage of research

13

1.2 Sector of employed respondents at the beginning and end of research

14

1.3 Branch of employed respondents at first and last stage of research

14

1.4 Outcomes of respondents by region

18

1.5 Outcomes of respondents by sex

18

1.6 Outcomes of respondents by education

19

1.7 Wage levels by sector at the final stage of research

20

2.1 Hours spent on housework in working-age couples

43

3.1 Views of respondents on the gender of professions

57

3.2 Percentage of women among the employed by branch

64

3.3 Professional changes of respondents during research period

72

5.1 Levels of mobility by gender during research period

123

5.2 The impact of mobility on outcomes

123

5.3 Skill enhancement and new qualifications by gender

130

5.4 Intensity of supplementary work and outcomes by gender

136

Figures

4.1

Ranking of work motivations

81

4.2

Dominant work orientations of men and women

82

Contributors Sarah Ashwin is a Reader in Industrial Relations at the London School of Economics. She is author of Russian Workers: The Anatomy of Patience (Manchester University Press, 1999), editor of Gender, State and Society in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia (Routledge, 2000) and co-author (with Simon Clarke) of Russian Trade Unions and Industrial Relations in Transition (Palgrave, 2003). Natal’ya Goncharova is a research fellow at the Scientific Research Centre ‘Region’ within Ul’yanovsk State University. She has been involved in numerous research projects on youth culture and gender in Russia, and has published widely on these topics. Marina Ilyina is an experienced sociologist whose research interests include sociolinguistics, the restructuring of employment, trade unions, and, most recently, gender. She works at the Centre for Independent Sociological Research in St Petersburg. Olga Issoupova has a PhD in sociology from Manchester University. Her research and publications have focused on motherhood, and gender and employment during the transition. Irina Kozina is Director of the Samara branch of the Institute for Comparative Labour Relations Research (ISITO). She is studying for a Doctor’s degree in Sociology, and has researched and published extensively in the field of employment restructuring. Elena Omel’chenko is Director of the Scientific Research Centre ‘Region’ within Ul’yanovsk State University. She has a Doctor’s degree in Sociology, and has researched and published widely on youth culture, gender and sexuality. Irina Popova works at the Institute of Sociology within the Russian Academy of Science. Her recent research has focused on the problems faced by professionals in adapting to the new Russian labour market. Irina Tartakovskaya is a research fellow at the Moscow branch of ISITO. She has published widely on gender in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia, both in English and in Russian. Svetlana Yaroshenko is Director of the Department of Economic Sociology, at the Institute of Socio-Economic and Energy Problems of the North in Syktyvkar. Her recent research has focused on poverty in Russia during transition and gender-related issues. Elena Zhidkova is a research fellow of the Samara branch of ISITO. She has recently begun her publishing career with articles on age discrimination and on gender.

Acknowledgements This book is the product of a ‘women’s collective’ consisting of myself, Natal’ya Goncharova, Marina Ilyina, Olga Issoupova, Marina Kiblitskaya, Irina Kozina, Tanya Lytkina, Elena Oniel’chenko, Irina Popova, Irina Tartakovskaya, Sveta Yaroshenko and Elena Zhidkova. I would like to thank all the team members for their forbearance, commitment and inspiration. They are very special women! My particular thanks go to Irina Kozina, who resolved numerous problems for me, and was a sustaining force throughout the production of this book; Irina Popova, who went far beyond the call of duty in her assistance; Irina Tartakovskaya, who provided invaluable help with translation, and Sveta Yaroshenko for her patience with my ceaseless queries. The funding for our female research collective was provided by an INTAS grant (INTAS97:20280) which financed the research on which the book is based, while data analysis and writing up were facilitated by a Sticerd grant. Simon Clarke, as always, provided enormous intellectual support during writing up, while Katarina Katz, Anna-Maria Salmi and Valery Vakubovich gave invaluable commentaries on individual chapters. Birgit Pfau-Effinger supplied me with very helpful advice on data analysis during a wonderful weekend at her house in Dresden. Meanwhile, Peter Sowden at Routledge was a very patient editor. I am also blessed with a cheerful and loving husband in Piotr, who kept me going when writing was tough. I would also like to thank all our respondents for participating in this project, and allowing themselves to be interviewed during what were often difficult times for them. Members of the research teams regularly remarked that reading the interviews was an emotional ordeal—indeed, I was reduced to tears on several occasions while analysing interviews—so the pain of our respondents in living through these events is hard to imagine. We wish them well, and hope that this book can in some small way contribute to an understanding of the problems that prevail in the contemporary Russian labour market. A final note: all the chapters were either written or translated and edited by Sarah Ashwin, with the exception of Chapter 7 which was translated by John Andrew. I thank him for his timely assistance. Sarah Ashwin October 2004

1 Dealing with devastation in Russia Men and women compared Sarah Ashwin

With the collapse of the Soviet system, the Russian government initiated a neo-liberal economic experiment as Utopian as the Bolshevik programme after 1917. No facet of life has remained untouched by the social crisis unleashed by this attempted economic transformation. The decline in Russia’s gross domestic product (GDP) in the 1990s was steeper and deeper than that experienced during the Great Depression in the USA (Connor, 2000:199; Rosefielde, 2001:116); indeed, Russia is said to have endured the ‘deepest and most sustained recession in world history’ during the reform era (Clarke, 1999a:1). This has led to a devastating decline in living standards for the majority of the population. In mid-1998 statistical real wages were a little over half their 1985 level. Moreover, this decline was accompanied by a huge growth in inequality,1 implying the position of poorest had declined even further (ibid.: 120). Unemployment was not as high as was expected, reaching 9.7 per cent in 1996, and rising to a peak of 13.2 per cent in 1998 (Goskomstat, 2003:130). Thereafter it declined, and stood at 8 per cent in 2002 (ibid.). Comparatively low unemployment was little cause for celebration, however, since it merely reflected the fact that labour was so cheap and flexible that enterprises had little reason to shed staff.2 Enterprises routinely resorted to late payment of wages, short time and enforced leave during the 1990s, and encountered little protest from workers who continued to work without pay for months at a time (Ashwin, 1999). Up until the August 1998 crash, wage delays of up to six months were reasonably common in sectors such as coal mining and public services, while a few unfortunate workers in enterprises such as the Anzhero-Sudzhesk glass factory in Kemerovo oblast’ endured wage debts of up to two years. Although the Russian economy has recovered somewhat since 1998—buoyed by the devaluation of the rouble and the high price of oil and metal—hardship is still widespread, with a quarter of Russians living in poverty in 2002 (Goskomstat, 2003:189). Reform implied a dramatic increase in poverty and insecurity. Although Russians have not generally been dying of starvation, one estimate places the number of premature deaths caused by ‘callous economic radicalism’ in the period 1990–1998 as high as 3.4 million (Rosefielde, 2001:1159).3 Male life expectancy plummeted in the reform era, declining from 64.2 in 1989 (Goskomstat, 2002:105), to a low of 57.5 in 1994. It then recovered to 61.3 in 1998, only to fall back to 58.4 in 2002 (Goskomstat, 2003:117). Meanwhile, female life expectancy remained more constant, declining from 74.4 in 1989 (Goskomstat, 2002:105) to a nadir of 71.1 in 1994, followed by a stabilisation at over 72 between 1996–2002 (Goskomstat, 2003:117). Researchers searching for the causes of this catastrophe have cited the ‘state of confusion, uncertainty and calamity’ experienced by Russians in the face of ‘dramatic changes in the labor market’—in short, severe social

Adapting to Russia's New Labour Market

2

stress (Shkolnikov et al., 1998:2008–2009). Certainly, one way in which the ‘stress’ cited by Shkolnikov and his colleagues has been translated into early deaths has been through alcohol consumption, which one estimate claims was directly or indirectly implicated in nearly 33 per cent of deaths in 1994, the shock year for falling male life expectancy (Nemstov, 2002:1422).4 Thus, while Russian workers did little to protest against the abrupt change in their fortunes, their silence was indicative of little other than misery—in the words of one cabinet minister of the early Yeltsin era, Russians reacted to reform by ‘going into their homes and dying’ (Standing, 1996:250).5 If we turn to look at the gender dimensions of this crisis, a somewhat unexpected picture emerges. The main surprise is the level of continuity of gender trends in employment in an era of economic transformation. Many commentators predicated that reform would have a differential impact on men and women, with women being its primary victims (for a summary of such views, see Ashwin and Bowers, 1997, and Katz, 2001:205–207). Two significant claims were that unemployment would have a ‘female face’, and that women would voluntarily leave the labour market once they were no longer forced to work by the Soviet state. Both of these predictions have proved unfounded. First, when the Labour Force Survey, using the internationally comparable definition of unemployment, was introduced in 1992, the male unemployment rate was found marginally to exceed the female (Ashwin and Bowers, 1997). It may be the case, as Katarina Katz suggests, that women were disproportionately affected by the wave of redundancies before the Labour Force Survey was introduced (Katz, 2001:213), but since 1992 women have never been the primary victims of unemployment. In 2002, the male unemployment rate was 9.1 per cent, while the female rate was 8.3 per cent (Goskomstat, 2003:130).6 The prediction that women would voluntarily withdraw from the labour force was also not realised. Both male and female employment dropped significantly between 1989 and 1998, but the gender differences in these falls were marginal, with female employment declining by less than ten million, and the male employment declining by over nine million (Katz, 2001:211). Women continue to make up just under half of the economically active population,7 and the labour participation of working-age women, at 75.1 per cent, is only marginally lower than that of working-age men at 79.9 per cent (Goskomstat, 2003:130). At the same time, male advantage in the world of work has been preserved, with women continuing, as in the Soviet era, to earn 60–70 per cent of men’s wages (Newell and Reilly, 1996; Arabsheibani and Lau, 1999; Katz, 2001:224–226). Indeed, Katz argues on the basis of her data from the Taganrog survey that the gender wage gap has increased, meaning that ‘whatever definition of “poverty” is chosen, more women than men are poor’ (2001:248). Meanwhile, the gender restructuring of employment during transition also appears to favour men, with men increasing their presence in the nowlucrative, but once female-dominated, spheres of banking and commerce, and women continuing to make up the overwhelming majority of employees in the poorly paid ‘budget sector’ areas of health care and education (ibid.: 216). But though men have preserved, and perhaps even increased, their labour market advantage, they have also been badly hit by reform. As has been discussed above, while female mortality rates have remained relatively stable, men have suffered a significant drop in life expectancy. In 1994, the gender gap in life expectancy was nearly 14 years, which was the highest in the world at the time (Standing, 1996:235), and, according to

Dealing with devastation in Russia: men and women compared

3

one group of researchers, is the ‘largest difference in life expectancy between the sexes ever recorded’ (Shkolnikov et al., 1998:2004). In 2001 the suicide rate of working-age men was nearly eight times higher than that of working-age women, while in the same year the death rate of working-age men from ‘occasional alcohol poisonings’ was over four times higher than that for working-age women (Goskomstat, 2002:261–262). These figures suggest that men have been less able to adapt to the stress of transformation than women. Meanwhile, they have certainly been drinking more than their female counterparts. One cautious study of alcohol consumption in the Russian population calculated that alcohol consumption was ten times higher among men than among women (Bobak et al., 1999:864). Of course, a gender gap in alcohol consumption is nothing new, but it is estimated that between 1992 and 1996 male alcohol consumption rose by 21 per cent, while female consumption fell by 37 per cent (Zohoori et al., 1998:1984). In line with this, Bobak and his colleagues found a link between alcohol consumption and unemployment in men, but not women (Bobak et al., 1999:861–864). This suggests that Russian men may have experienced greater difficulty in coping with adversity than their female counterparts. Overall, therefore, we are faced with a paradox. Soviet trends have continued: women have preserved their presence in the labour force, but men have retained, or even increased, their relative advantage in the sphere of employment. At the same time, men are dying earlier and drinking more, neither of which speaks of social success. Our aim in this book is to investigate the social processes that lie behind these trends, by looking at the adaptation of men and women to the new Russian labour market. So far, two somewhat contradictory accounts of gender differences in the experience of reform have emerged. As was discussed above, some researchers have emphasised female disadvantage during the transition, stressing the importance of discrimination, the dominance of patriarchal ‘discourses’, and women’s double burden of work and domestic duties (Bridger et al., 1996; Kay, 2000). Meanwhile, other researchers have begun to focus on the problems faced by men during transition (Burawoy et al., 2000a; 2000b; Kiblitskaya, 2000; Rotkirch, 2000). Most notably, Burawoy et al. (2000a) have argued that during transition poor men have ‘become increasingly superfluous’ (p. 60). This has occurred because of what they term ‘economic involution’ in which the importance of the public economy has waned so that ‘economic activity has been forced back into the household as the unit of production and reproduction’ (Burawoy et al., 2000b: 237). In this situation, women’s role in the household increases in importance, while the significance of male employment to survival decreases. Men thus become polarised between those at the bottom who ‘suffer dislocation, marked by early death and demoralization’ and are dependent on women, and those who ‘dominate market transactions’—‘the so-called New Russians, descendants of the old nomenklatura and their hangers on, merchants and speculators who rose with organized crime, opportunist adventurers who work the networks inherited from the Kosomol’ (2000a: 61). In this account, women are the heroic survivors of transition while men are the primary casualties. Clearly, this sits uneasily with the picture of female subordination drawn by commentators such as Bridger and Kay. In this book, we explore both sides of the story, using data from our study which followed the labour market progress of 120 men and 120 women during 1999–2001. From the beginning of our research, we noticed the gap between the incomes and


4

aspirations of our male and female respondents, and the difficulties that women faced in the labour market. At the same time, the acute problems experienced by our male respondents also caught our attention, and several of us published articles analysing their plight (Lytkina, 2001; Tartakovskaya, 2002; Ashwin and Lytkina, 2004). In the course of the book, we attempt to connect these two observations regarding the relative position of men and women, and reveal the way in which they fit together. The key to this, as will be seen, lies in the gender division of labour within the household. The introduction outlines our research methods, the nature of our sample, and provides local and institutional contextualisation. This is followed by an account of the categorisation which we used to classify the outcomes of our respondents at the end of the research, which is employed throughout the book. Finally, a preliminary account of these outcomes is provided, followed by a brief introduction to the themes of the book.

Research methods Our project was designed to examine gender differences in employment strategies through longitudinal qualitative research which traced the labour market activity of specially selected groups of men and women through a consecutive series of semistructured deep interviews. The four groups selected were defined by a series of distinct labour market transitions at the beginning of the research. Equal numbers of men and women (thirty in each group) were selected and were interviewed four times at six-month intervals (1999–2001). The research on the four different groups was carried out in four separate cities. The groups chosen were: (1) those confronting the labour market involuntarily as a result of the acute financial difficulties of their employer (in Moscow); (2) new entrants to the labour market, who had just graduated from university and technical training institutes (in Ul’yanovsk); (3) those who were registered unemployed and seeking work through the state Employment Service (in Samara); and (4) those whose incomes were so low that they qualified for state social assistance (in Syktyvkar). When referring to respondents we use a three-number code: the first indicates the respondent’s city (1–4 beginning with Moscow, and continuing in the same order as above); the second is the respondent’s number, and the third indicates the stage of research from which information is drawn. Pseudonyms are used when respondents are named in case histories. Where the sex of a respondent is unclear from the context, this is indicated by an ‘m’ or ‘f’ appended to the reference code. What the respondents had in common was their problematic position in the labour market at the beginning of the research. The labour market challenges they faced were distinct, however, and each group was located in a different region.8 As will be discussed below, although all four of our research sites are regional capitals, and all are above the Russian average in terms of prosperity, their labour markets do differ considerably. Nevertheless, in this book we opt for a thematic approach, in which the analysis of each chapter is based on the combined data from all four regions. As is explained below, this was related to the research questions addressed in this book. Case studies focusing on the labour market experience of the separate groups would have highlighted issues which we do not deal with here,9 but we are confident that our analysis of gender difference would


5

not have been altered. Instead, similar issues with regard to gender would have surfaced in each regional study, leading to unnecessary repetition. Given the nature of our sample and the small numbers involved (240 respondents at the beginning of the study, and 191 by the end), we do not claim that our results can be generalised to Russia as a whole. Rather, wherever possible, we cite the findings from larger data sets, mainly the 1998 Institute of Comparative Labour Relations Research (ISITO) Household Survey, and the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS), and use our qualitative evidence to explain the processes that lie behind the outcomes captured by such research. In some cases, where we are charting new territory, we present hypotheses which can be tested on larger data sets. Having said this, it is worth noting that in spite of the limitations of our sample from the point of view of statistical generalisation, it does include a broad cross-section of the working-age population in terms of age, education and profession. Interestingly, many of our findings (on issues such as the size of the gender wage gap and the proportion of respondents working in each sector) are close to those of much larger data sets with randomised samples. In terms of our decision to analyse the combined data set (as opposed to presenting case studies), two points should be made. First, we recognise that the opportunities and income levels within the four labour markets differ. We attempt to address this by using regional subsistence minima and average wages to assess the end points of our respondents. In this way, the position of every respondent at the end of the research is judged according to the standard of living in their own region. Second, while our respondents were located in four different labour markets, they were making decisions within a similar normative and institutional framework, much of which was inherited from the Soviet past. The gender norms, work orientations, and forms of behaviour resulting from these were not noticeably divergent in the different labour markets. What differed were the outcomes, which were influenced by factors such as gender, education level, professional affiliation, and individual potential. In this book, we focus on explaining how gender norms and the behaviour associated with them shape the labour market outcomes and well-being of men and women trying to adapt to a transforming economy.

The samples In each city, our respondents were selected on the basis of their labour market situation at the beginning of the research. For this reason, the nature of our sample varied from city to city. Below we take each group in turn, beginning with some background regarding the city. Next, we explain how respondents were selected and outline the resultant composition of each city sample. The situation of each group is then contextualised with background regarding the institutional setting from which they were selected. Finally, the research techniques (which were common to all the research teams) are described, and their advantages and limitations identified.


6

Moscow Moscow is a capital city with over ten million inhabitants. It enjoys low unemployment, and a highly developed commercial and financial infrastructure. At the same time, it has a large industrial sector which saw severe decline in the 1990s. Industrial production fell by two-thirds between 1990 and 1997, as compared with a 50 per cent fall in Russia as a whole (Clarke, 1999b:294). Therefore, despite the prosperity of the city, many Muscovites have been faced with the challenge of adaptation to a transformed labour market. In Moscow, our sample was composed of those who had reasons to confront this changed labour market. Half our sample was selected from a failing Moscow enterprise, and the remaining half from struggling academic institutes. The enterprise was a producer of small electrical items such as hairdryers and electric razors, which had been established in 1923. As with all such plants, it had undergone a privatisation process in the 1990s, but restructuring was slow and painful. In the Soviet era it had little competition and a guaranteed market, but in the 1990s it had been thrown into crisis. The enterprise’s main problem was in selling its products in the face of the combined pressure of competition from foreign imports and the falling purchasing power of the local population. At the end of 1998, around the time we were selecting an enterprise for our study, the financial manager of the firm considered it to be in an extremely difficult situation. Employment had steadily fallen at the plant—from 1,520 staff in 1988 to just 288 a decade later. But despite having a slimmed-down staff of less than a fifth of its Soviet complement, it was paying low wages, often with delays. In mid-1999 the average wage at the plant was 1,222 roubles a month,10 while the average wage at large and medium enterprises in Moscow was more than twice this at 2,826 roubles a month. Meanwhile, in 1998 wage delays for some categories of worker had reached eleven months, with even the most qualified workers being paid five months late.11 The situation eased somewhat after the 1998 financial crash, but in mid-1999 there were still wage delays of four to five months. The factory therefore suited our purposes and was selected as our ‘failing enterprise’. At the time of the first interviews only five of the thirty respondents had a household income per head above the subsistence minimum, and in the words of the interviewer, Marina Kiblitskaya, ‘the majority of the respondents are very poor, economise and buy only necessities’ (Kiblitskaya, 1999). The sample was selected with the help of the chief personnel officer. Fifteen men and fifteen women were selected from a wide range of sections: both core and auxiliary shops were represented, as well as administrative divisions such as the planning and accounts departments. Despite efforts to get a balance of workers and ITR (engineers), only seven of the latter were recruited to the sample. The workers chosen ranged from unskilled to skilled workers (from a loader at the bottom of the skill hierarchy to fitters at the top). As can be imagined from the above description, this enterprise had an ageing labour collective. We did, however, ensure that nearly half the sample (13 respondents) was under 40. The other half of our Moscow sample was drawn from two academic institutes, the Botanical Gardens, and Institute of Biochemistry, both part of the Russian Academy of Science. Approximately one-third of respondents were drawn from the former, the


7

remainder from the latter. In the Soviet era the two organisations had occupied different positions within the Russian academic hierarchy, the biochemists enjoying a much higher status than the botanists. Nevertheless, even the latter had been able to live on their wages in the past, albeit modestly. Both organisations were facing severe problems in the 1990s. The wages at the Botanical Gardens had fallen below poverty levels, although they were paid regularly since the Gardens were partly funded by the prosperous Moscow city government. The situation at the Biochemistry Institute was somewhat more unstable, with most respondents describing the organisation as ‘dying’. The mean wage in this sample was 700 roubles at the beginning of the research (significantly below the subsistence minimum), with wages ranging from the secretarial wage of 300 roubles, to 1,200 paid to senior academic administrators. Half the sample were under 40 (with equal numbers of men and women in each age group). The vast majority of respondents, aside from one secretary and an engineer, were academics, ranging in status from vice director to junior research assistant, with the middle-ranking senior research fellows and research fellows forming the majority of the sample. Ul’yanovsk Ul’yanovsk is a regional capital with a population of 678,900.12 It is the least prosperous of the cities in our study, although it is still above the Russian average. Until 2000 Ul’yanovsk had a conservative regional government which favoured the traditional economy over the new private sector. This meant that the latter sphere was slow to develop, with Ul’yanovsk oblast’ exhibiting far less private sector development than the neighbouring Samara region. At the same time, heavy industry fared better than in the rest of Russia, with large-scale metallurgical and machine-building industries continuing to form the bedrock of the city economy. A new phase of economic development began with the election of Vladimir Shamanov as regional governor in late 2000. In Ul’yanovsk, half the sample were graduates from technical training colleges (technikum) providing upper vocational education for a range of professions, and the other half were graduates from a variety of university faculties. Equal numbers of men and women were selected from each type of institution. Within the limits of the quota for sex, respondents were randomly selected from the lists of graduates from the institutions concerned. They ranged in age from 17–23 (at the beginning of the research), with the modal age being 22, and the mean age 21. In order to understand the educational position of our respondents, some background regarding the Russian education system is required. At present it remains ‘just a deteriorating version of the Soviet system…still geared toward teaching the skills demanded by the Soviet economy’ (Fan et al., 1999:619). So far, the Russian government has done little to change the system ‘other than slashing its funding’ (ibid.: 621). The key changes that have occurred to date are: the informal payments required for more popular courses; the growth of private colleges of varying quality alongside the traditional institutions, and the fact that graduates from vocational and higher education are no longer guaranteed a job in their chosen profession. These changes are socially significant, exacerbating the dramatic growth in inequality in post-Soviet Russia, but in educational terms the fundamental features of the old system remain. The Soviet education system


8

was rigidly stratified and had a heavy vocational emphasis. After completing the compulsory eight grades at school, individuals were faced with four potential routes. The options were: (1) leave school and enter the labour market; (2) gain a lower-vocational training by entering a ‘professional-technical school’ (PTU); (3) gain an upper vocational training school by entering a specialised secondary school or technical training college (a technikum); or, finally, (4) complete three more ‘academic’ years at school in preparation for entering higher education (Gerber, 2003:245–246). Our two groups of graduates are thus products of the top of Russia’s educational spectrum. Those graduating from higher education would be expected to become professionals, while the intended destination of those with an upper vocational education would be low to mid-grade non-manual employment in areas such as nursing, programming and catering. One major issue affecting only young men must be noted here: compulsory military service. Three of our male respondents in this group served in the army during the course of the research, all of them respondents with vocational rather than higher education—the university graduates in our sample all succeeded in avoiding military service during the period of our study. In spite of this low call-up rate, the prospect of military service had an influence on the employment strategies of all the young men in our sample. According to the research group, it induced a certain passivity in those who realised it was an inevitability, while others had their career paths distorted by a desire to find a way of avoiding military service. A popular variant among our university graduates was to undertake post-graduate study (which postpones military service, and provides a chance to escape it altogether),13 while other possibilities were to work at a military enterprise or a law-enforcement agency. Meanwhile, military service had a dramatic impact on those who did not avoid it, as is reported in Chapter 7. Samara Samara is a large industrial city with over one million inhabitants, which was a centre of the military-industrial complex in the Soviet era. Although it has undergone painful industrial restructuring since the collapse of communism, its significant oil and gas resources have served to soften the impact of reform somewhat. Indeed, Samara is a prosperous city by Russian standards, and the region likes to present itself as being in the forefront of economic reform. Nonetheless, like the rest of Russia, Samara has been afflicted by unemployment and poverty during the transition era. At the time our study began in 1999, Samara had an unemployment rate of 12 per cent according to the Labour Force Survey, while registered unemployment stood at 3.7 per cent. Women made up a slight majority of the registered unemployed (57 per cent), as is the case in most places in Russia. The most common professions of the registered unemployed in Samara at this time were that of engineer and accountant. The average spell of (registered) unemployment in Samara in 1999 was nine months. Our sample in Samara was drawn from the registered unemployed. The research team went to federal employment centres and recruited respondents from those attending to register or re-register as unemployed. Respondents were selected in order to ensure that the male and female samples were comparable in terms of education and age. In terms of age, approximately half the respondents fell into the 31–49 age group at the beginning of the research, and one quarter each into the under-30 and over-50 categories. Meanwhile,


9

approximately 40 per cent had higher education, 40 per cent vocational education, with the remainder divided between secondary and unfinished higher. In line with the character of the city, over 70 per cent of those we selected had work experience in industry, either as engineers or workers, while another 15 per cent were accountants, managers or economists. The mean income of these respondents at the time of the first interview was 733 roubles a month (in comparison to a regional subsistence minimum of 815 roubles per month). Some 80 per cent of them were in reality looking for work at the beginning of our study. In order to contextualise the situation of the respondents in this group, some background about the Employment Service is required. The Federal Employment Service was established by the 1991 Employment Law. It is funded by a payroll tax which is paid into the regionally administered Federal Employment Fund. For this reason, regions with high unemployment are liable to run short of funds to pay benefits, although Samara region was not afflicted by this problem during our study. The tasks of the Employment Service are: administering unemployment registration and benefit provision; job placement; training and re-training; granting early retirement to those of pre-pension age considered unfit to work; job protection through employment subsidies; financing public works, and funding job creation measures such as start-up grants to new business. The amount of money spent on these various activities varies greatly from region to region largely as a result of differing levels of economic prosperity (Pirogov and Pronin, 1999).14 Those who are registered as unemployed have to satisfy strict criteria, proving that they are unemployed and actively looking for work. According to the system in operation at the time of our study, the level of benefit paid varied according to the reason for unemployment, and the length of time unemployed. Those made unemployed through plant closure or redundancy were paid at the level of their average wage for three months by their former employer, for the next three months they received 75 per cent of their average wage from the Employment Service, falling to 60 per cent for the following four months, and 45 per cent for the last two months. Those entering unemployment voluntarily received 75 per cent of their last average wage for three months, 60 per cent for four months, and 45 per cent for five months. Finally, those without a history of employment or dismissed more than once in a year received 20 per cent of the subsistence minimum for a period of twelve months. After twelve months, all groups exhausted their benefit entitlement for a period of six months, after which they were paid 20 per cent of the subsistence minimum for a further six months. The average level of benefit paid to the unemployed in Samara in 1999 was about half the level of the regional subsistence minimum. In order to retain their qualification for benefits, the unemployed must enquire about all the vacancies offered to them by the Employment Service. They must then either take the job or be stamped by the relevant personnel department as ‘not hired’. If they do not obtain this stamp, their failure to take the job will be considered ‘unmotivated’—which can lead to the removal of their benefit. Late payment of wages at the enterprise concerned is not considered a valid reason for refusing a job (Karelina, 1996). The vacancies about which an individual is notified are decided on the basis of employment history which is recorded in his or her labour book. Thus, for example, an accountant would not be forced to enquire about a vacancy for the post of cleaner, but once an


10

individual had taken such a lowly job, it would then be considered an appropriate option. This obviously gives those vulnerable in the labour market good reason to be cautious about the types of formal employment (entailing labour book registration) they will accept—as does the fact that the wage they accept will determine future unemployment benefit levels in the event of job loss. The Employment Service has encountered a great deal of criticism for its work in job placement,15 although the main problems are the mismatch of supply and demand in the labour market, and the fact that the service tends to be notified about jobs at the lower end of the labour market which are difficult to fill. But a valid criticism of the service is its continuation of the Soviet tradition of bureaucratic insensitivity. The wishes of the unemployed individual are not taken into account in the allocation of vacancies, while the staff are often unhelpful. As the Russian sociologist Marina Karelina observed on the basis of her research into the Samara Employment Service in the mid-1990s, In the reception the mostly middle-aged and older women sit, who talk pretty rudely to the clients and are easily irritated… In general, this beautiful, well-appointed building represents a typical Soviet type of office, where everyone spits on everyone else and the main thing produced is reports. (1996:235) According to the reports of our Samara team, nothing much has changed since then, and several of our Samara respondents noted this unpleasant aspect of the Employment Service. One classic example of Soviet-style bureaucratic belittling complained of by one of our interviewees was the occasional strategic use of the impolite ty form of address to clients as opposed to the formal vy.16 Another respondent concluded on the basis of his experience, ‘like all state structures, all our state apparatus—it’s intended to humiliate people’ (3–47–3). Syktyvkar Syktyvkar is the capital of the Komi Republic in Northern Russia, and has a population of a quarter of a million. Its main industries are timber and paper, and it has a large social and administrative apparatus. The Republic has considerable natural resources of coal, oil and gas. Although Syktyvkar endured major economic restructuring in the 1990s with the decline of areas such as light industry and construction, the city had an unemployment rate below the Russian average throughout our study. Our respondents were drawn from the ranks of the registered poor, who in 1999 numbered 6,352 families (approximately 5 per cent of the families in the city). Our sample was drawn from the list of the registered poor held by the city. This list was composed of the individual applicants, although the unit of registration is the family. Approximately 90 per cent of all poor families had been registered by women at the time our study began (for a discussion of this see chapter 5), but we ensured our sample comprised equal numbers of men and women. Half the respondents were under 35, and half were employed at the beginning of the study (a slightly greater proportion of whom were women).17 As in Samara, respondents were selected in order to ensure that the male


11

and female samples were comparable in terms of educational level. Reflecting the population of the poor of the city, only just over a tenth had higher or unfinished higher education, while approximately 60 per cent had vocational training. Although concealing income from the benefits agency was popularly supposed to be widespread, at the beginning of our study only three of the respondents lived in households where the income per head was above the regional subsistence minimum. A word about Russia’s social protection system is in order. The system in operation at the time of our study was highly complex with ‘a staggeringly large array of local as well as central benefits, ranging from social services as diverse as reduced fares for transportation, to the provision of soup kitchens or clean linen’ (Alexandrova and Braithwaite, 2000:228). This was partly because of the complexity of the federal benefit system—a list of federal social insurance and assistance benefits published in 1994 in the journal Chelovek i trud covered thirty pages (Alexandrova and Braithwaite, 2000:242)— and partly because of decentralisation. A whole range of cash and inkind benefits were provided locally, with better-off regions providing more generous and varied assistance. The Russian government turned to address this piecemeal patchwork of provision in 1997 when it received a World Bank Social Protection Adjustment Loan, and as part of its attempted reform set up pilot schemes to test different methods of means testing. Three regions were chosen for the pilots—Komi Republic, Voronezkaya oblast’ and Volgogradskaya oblast’ (for details of the different approaches tested, see Alexandrova and Braithwaite, 2000). The method adopted in our region of Komi Republic was to base poverty assessments on so-called ‘household economic potential’, a system which remained in effect 1997–2001. This measure included a number of elements, most importantly, income, housing, property and ‘earnings potential’.18 The latter implied that working-age individuals had to either be in work or registered with the Employment Service as unemployed in order to receive benefit. Thus, individuals in our sample had established their need according to ‘household economic potential’ criteria. Depending on their precise situation, their registration as poor could entitle them to benefit in various forms including supplementary benefit, housing benefit, and free school meals. Although the results of the pilot were not published, the Komi experiment was abandoned after 2001, when it was decided that all families with income below the subsistence minimum should be eligible for assistance, regardless of their ‘household economic potential’. This immediately increased the numbers applying for help. At the time of writing Russia has still not introduced a unified national system of poverty relief.

The interviews and other data sources The interviews were conducted by the Russian research teams, and full transcripts were prepared (in Russian). At each stage of the research a common interview guide was used by all teams. The content varied slightly from interview to interview—for example, the first interview entailed a work history, while the last contained several questions asking respondents to reflect on the changes in their lives during the research period. But in each interview the two main blocks of questions concerned labour market behaviour, and issues related to the household (including budgeting and the domestic division of labour). In addition to the transcripts, some answers were formalised and recorded in SPSS.


12

Aside from the Moscow sample, who were often interviewed at work, most interviews were conducted at respondents’ homes. Since Russian flats are small, it was not always possible to conduct interviews in private. Where this was the case, interviewers took advantage of the presence of other household members to elicit additional information, but also attempted to conduct at least part of the interview away from the ears of others. Respondents were interviewed by the same researcher at each stage. This meant that by the final stage of the research a high degree of trust had been built up in most cases. After each stage of the research, the teams produced reports. These were used to plan the interview guide for the next stage, and formed the basis for a number of articles published during the research. After the research was complete, our analysis took two forms. First, we developed a means of categorising our respondents (which is discussed below). Second, we coded the interviews using ATLASti 4.1 for windows. Each research team coded their own interviews, according to a common scheme agreed after a period of piloting. The details of this are discussed in the relevant chapters. In addition, we prepared an outline of each respondent’s trajectory during the research, which included an ‘event history’. Alongside our own findings, four sets of surveys are frequently referred to in the book. First, we draw heavily on findings from the 1998 ISITO Household Survey which was carried out in Samara, Syktyvkar, Kemerovo and Lyubersty, a large town near Moscow. Random samples were drawn in each city and a total of 4000 households, and 6000 individuals were surveyed. For more details see Clarke (1999a:6–7). Second, various analyses of the well-known Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) are cited. This is a nationally representative household panel survey, which was designed to capture the effects of economic transformation on the welfare of households and individuals, and has been carried out since 1992 under the auspices of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Third, we frequently refer to Katarina Katz’s analyses of the Taganrog surveys. These were carried out in 1989 and 1993–94 in the southern Russian city of Taganrog using household probability samples. For more details see Katz, 2001:82–84; 207–209. Finally, data from Valery Yakubovich’s 1999 survey of hires in Samara is used, and introduced, in Chapters 3 and 6.

Our sample in context Before moving to a preliminary discussion of our findings, it is helpful to locate them within the wider Russian context. Perhaps surprisingly, given the way our sample was constructed, many of our findings are in line with the broader national picture. The women in our sample earned on average 63 per cent of men’s monthly wages in their primary jobs at the final stage of our study.19 This is in line with findings from larger surveys (albeit from earlier in the transition era). Using RLMS data for 1992, Newell and Reilly (1996) found that women earned 65 per cent of men’s monthly wage; Arabsheibani and Lau (1999) calculated that women earned 63 per cent of men’s monthly earnings using 1994 RLMS data, while on the basis of data from the 1993 survey in Taganrog, Katz found that women’s average monthly wages at their primary job were 62 per cent of those earned by men (2001:224–226). The gap for hourly wages is lower, with both Katz (ibid.: 226) and Newell and Reilly (1996:343) calculating a female to male


13

earnings ratio of approximately 70 per cent. We do not have accurate estimates of the number of hours worked by our respondents, but assume that the hourly wage gap in our data would likewise be lower than the gap in monthly earnings. Meanwhile, if we look at total income, in our data, women’s overall income was 68 per cent of men’s.20 Turning to education, given the way our sample was constructed, each educational category was roughly gender-balanced at the beginning of the research, and this was still the case at the end of the research. The educational profile of the respondents remaining in the study at the end of our research (T4) is shown in Table 1.1. If we compare our sample with educational attainment in Russia as a whole, there is one important difference. Given the nature of our Moscow and Ul’yanovsk samples, those with higher education are over-represented in our study. According to the 1994 microcensus, just over 18 per cent of those in the 25–59 age group had higher education (Goskomstat, 2000:362), as against 43 per cent in our study. Despite the composition of our Ul’yanovsk sample, however, our upper vocational category is close to the national average of nearly 27 per cent in the 25–59 age range captured in the micro-census (ibid). If we turn to employment, the only significant comparison that can be made with the rest of Russia is in terms of sector (property form), since branch profile is skewed by the nature of our sample, and regional specificities. There was quite significant change in the sectoral affiliation of our respondents over time, since over half our sample were not employed at the beginning of our research. The sector of employment of our respondents at the beginning and end of the research shown in Table 1.2. At the last stage of our research, just over half the employed respondents in our sample (52 per cent) were working in the state sector. This is comparable to the level of state employment found in the ISITO household survey in 1998, which also stood at over half (Grogan, 2000:43).21 Similarly, the ISITO survey found just over 20 per cent employed in the privatised sector in 1998 (ibid.), while the figure in our study at the end of the research was 22 per cent. We found approximately the same proportion working in the new private sector (the so-called de novo enterprises) as in the privatised sector, while the ISITO survey found a smaller proportion in the new private sector. In both cases, the fraction of self-employed individuals was very low (4 per cent in our case). The only significant difference concerns the women in our sample. In general, research on larger data sets has found that women are less likely to make transitions into non-state enterprises than men, and find it difficult to enter the new private sector (Grogan, 2000).

Table 1.1 Educational level of respondents at the final stage of research Educational level

Less than secondary

Secondary Lower vocational

Upper vocational

Unfinished higher

Higher

Men (n=92)

3

9

12

21

5

42

Women (n=99)

4

7

18

27

3

40

16 (8%)

30 (16%)

48 (25%)

8 (4%)

82 (43%)

Total (n=191) 7 (4%)


14

Table 1.2 Sector of employed respondents at the beginning and end of the researcha Sector

Men

Women

T1

T4

T1

T4

State

25

35

37

48

Privatised

17

20

13

15

New private

4

15

2

21

Self-employed

2

4

0

3

48

74

52

87

Total a

The figures for T1 include only those respondents who remained in the study until T4.

The women in our sample are not less likely than men to enter the new private sector— roughly equal proportions of the employed women and men ended up in this sector at the end of the research (24 and 20 per cent respectively). As will be seen in Chapter 5, we also had a female sample which was more mobile than that found in larger data sets. We assume that the activism of our female respondents is in some way related to the nature of our sample. The distribution of our respondents by branch is strongly skewed by the nature of our Moscow sample, approximately half of which was working in science at the beginning of the research and, as can be seen Table 1.3, continued to do so during the research. Nonetheless, the high proportion of women working in education and health accords with the national picture, as does women’s strong representation in trade and catering. The fact that such a large proportion of our women were working in industry, again results from the nature of Moscow factory sample. In Russia as a whole, women’s presence in industry declined significantly during the 1990s, from

Table 1.3 Branch of employed respondents at first and last stage of researcha Branch

Men

Women

T1

T4

T1

T4

Science

16

15

14

15

Industry

13

19

10

12

Construction

1

3

1

2

Communications

0

1

0

1

Transport

2

4

1

1

Police, military, etc.

2

3

2

3

Health Care

3

4

6

7


15

Education & culture

1

4

12

15

Communal services

1

3

0

4

Public administration

1

2

0

1

Social protection

1

1

2

3

Services

1

4

1

3

Trade & catering

6

8

2

15

Financial services

0

3

0

2

Marketing & advertising

0

0

1

3

48

74

52

87

Total a

The figures for T1 include only those respondents who remained in the study until T4.

48 per cent of those employed there in 1990 to 38 per cent in 1998 (Katz, 2001:215–216). These issues are discussed in more detail in Chapter 3.

Assessing the outcomes of our respondents In order to analyse the implications of gender differences in employment behaviour, we needed some means of judging the labour market ‘success’ of our respondents. We devised an index based on the regional average wages and subsistence minima—so that the success of each respondent was judged in relation to the living standards of their region, and not by a common standard. Our categorisation was as follows: • Comfortable—those with an income above the average wage for their region. • Coping—those with an income below the average wage for their region, but above the regional subsistence minimum. • Poor—those with an income below their regional subsistence minimum, but in formal employment. • Excluded—the unemployed or economically inactive with an income below their regional subsistence minimum. Since our primary interest was in individual labour market success, respondents were judged according to their personal income rather than their household income. Our categorisation is based on income and employment. These objective measures of success have the merit of allowing ‘subjective’ indicators of well-being to be considered as causal factors where appropriate, whereas including them in our categorisation would have entailed a risk of tautology. We decided to omit formal employment as a qualification to entry to our coping and comfortable categories, because this would have excluded from these categories those who had managed to secure an income above the subsistence minimum or average wage through means other than a formal job (such as ‘sponsorship’ by a rich individual, or informal labour activity). We felt that the latter strategies (both of which occur in our data) deserved to be considered alongside other routes out of poverty and including formal employment as a criteria would have prevented this. We did,


16

however, make a distinction between the working and non-working poor, because we considered the latter to be ‘excluded’ in a way the former were not. This is discussed in more detail below. We used an individual’s full personal income, rather than formal wage, to determine their category. We considered this necessary because of the prevalence of secondary employment in our sample, which allowed many of our respondents to escape poverty. It should be stressed, therefore, that although we used the regional average wage as our threshold for ‘comfort’, some of those in our comfortable category did not have an above-average wage, but a total income above the level of the regional average wage. As indicated, the most common way of achieving this was through secondary employment. Issues such as income stability arise in cases of this kind, and these are dealt with in the appropriate sections of the book. The decision to use average wage figures was pragmatic, since these were readily available at a regional level. Nevertheless, we consider that, even applied to total income, they provided a meaningful threshold separating those just above the poverty line from those enjoying relative prosperity. The subsistence minimum, meanwhile, is a robust, if rather low, poverty line. It was adopted by the Ministry of Labour in 1992, and is defined as the level of income which is sufficient for psychological survival in crisis conditions. Although it was originally designed as a temporary measure, it has become the standard definition of poverty in Russia. This minimum is about a third of the level of the Soviet poverty line, which was set at about half the average income per head and thus corresponded to the commonly accepted standard for a relative poverty line (Clarke, 2000:318–319). There is a national subsistence minimum, but to take account of price variations across Russia, each region also has its own definition of the minimum, and it is these that we have used in our categorisation. The subsistence minimum is sufficient for food and everyday necessities (housing, fuel, energy and communal services), but not for the repair or replacement of durable items including clothing, furniture, household equipment, and so on. The measure is the most rigorously prepared of the available poverty measures in Russia. One indication that the subsistence minimum is a good guide to the real subsistence needs of the population comes from Goskomstat figures showing that those in acute poverty in 1996 (with a per capita income less than half of the subsistence minimum) had a money expenditure of more than double their money income—that is, they needed to spend to the level of subsistence minimum in order to survive (reported in Clarke, 2000:325). Nonetheless, in contemporary Russia a significant proportion of people live below the subsistence minimum—in 2001, the year our study finished, 27.3 per cent of the Russian population were in this situation (Goskomstat, 2003:189). Moving on to the criteria of employment, we did not use the International Labour Organisation (ILO) definition22 to judge an individual’s employment status. Instead, we defined the ‘employed’ as those who were formally employed, self-employed, on maternity leave, in military service, or engaged in full-time study. Thus, those with occasional or casual employment were deemed to be ‘unemployed’, and, indeed, universally considered themselves to be so. As Simon Clarke has argued, individuals in Russia with only informal employment regard this as ‘secondary employment’ even if they do not have main job (2002:12), and we have constructed our categorisation in line with this local understanding of the meaning of employment. Along with the


17

unemployed, the long-term sick, non-working disabled or early-retired were considered not to be employed. Finally, our definition of ‘exclusion’ requires explanation. ‘Interpretations of the term “social exclusion” are legion’ (Burchardt et al., 2002:30), but most include a number of dimensions beyond employment and income. For example, Burchardt et al. have recently developed a useful definition which includes four dimensions: (1) consumption, which they operationalise using household income as a proxy; (2) production, which they operationalise in terms of employment status; (3) political engagement; and (4) social interaction (ibid.: 30–34). Our ‘excluded’ group are defined only according to the first two dimensions, but given that our research focused on employment rather than social exclusion per se, we consider this to be justified. The limitation of our categorisation is that it is based on respondents’ situation at one arbitrary moment in time: the end of our research. Our ‘endpoint’ is a random moment, although our research can provide insight into how the respondents reached the level of prosperity or poverty they attained at this point. Of course, in some cases this position will be sustained, while in others it will not. One way of dealing with this problem would have been to include a longitudinal measure in our categorisation, but given the short period for which we followed our respondents, and their dynamism during this period, we did not feel this was appropriate or feasible. We do, however, deal with the issue of the ‘durability’ of outcomes to some extent by, for example, discussing the conditions in which exclusion is likely to become permanent (when alcohol abuse is involved, for instance), and those in which a ‘comfortable’ income is precarious—such as when it is based on long hours in supplementary employment. The artificiality of our endpoint remains an unavoidable limitation of our approach, but we felt its benefits as a means of assessing our respondents’ labour market success outweighed its limitations.

Analysis of outcomes This section presents the outcomes of our respondents. We first show the regional breakdown, followed by gender, education and sector. This is followed by a discussion of our findings with regard to gender. The regional breakdown of outcomes for our respondents shown in Table 1.4 was in line with what we would expect, given the characteristics of the groups. Seeing as the Moscow group were employed at the beginning of the research, albeit in struggling organisations, it is not surprising that none of the respondents ended up in our excluded category. The relatively high proportion of young graduates with an income above the average wage in Ul’yanovsk was also predictable. Only just over a third of the Samara respondents ended up with an income below the subsistence minimum, which reflects the relative prosperity of the city, and the fact this sample were relatively highly skilled. Meanwhile, the fact that over 50 per cent of the Syktyvkar respondents found themselves with an income below the regional subsistence minimum at the end of the research was in line with our expectations given that they were selected from among the registered poor, who faced numerous disadvantages at the beginning of the research, ranging from low skills to alcohol dependency. Overall, we have a mixture of outcomes among all the


18

regional groups, which gives us a good basis for examining the factors shaping the fate of our respondents. To turn first to gender: how do the fates of men and women in our sample compare? Unsurprisingly, in line with previous research findings in Russia, and indeed throughout the world, our male respondents ended the research in a more prosperous position than the women. This is discussed below, and in more detail in the chapters, which, in line with the aim of the research, seek to understand how the behaviour of men and women influenced their labour market success. As can be seen in Table 1.5, more than double proportion of men ended up in our ‘comfortable’ category than did women, while nearly half of women ended up with an income below the subsistence minimum as opposed to a quarter of men. The proportions of men and women in our coping and excluded categories were roughly equal. This pattern was fairly consistent across the regions, with the major exception being Syktyvkar.

Table 1.4 Outcomes of respondents by region City

Individual categorisation Comfortable

Coping

Poor

Excluded

Total

Moscow

16 (34%)

23 (49%)

8 (17%)

0

47 (100%)

Ul’yanovsk

17 (35.4%)

13 (27.1%)

14 (29.2%)

4 (8.3%)

48 (100%)

Samara

13 (26.5%)

18 (36.7%)

9 (18.4%)

9 (18.4%)

49 (100%)

Syktyvkar

6 (12.8%)

15 (31.9%)

19 (40.4%)

7 (14.9%)

47 (100%)

Total

52 (27.2%)

69 (36.1%)

50 (26.2%)

20 (10.5%)

191 (100%)

Table 1.5 Outcomes of respondents by sex Sex


Coping

Poor

Excluded

Total

Male

34 (37%)

35 (38%)

13 (14.1%)

10 (10.9%)

92 (100%)

Female

18 (18.2%)

34 (34.3%)

37 (37.4%)

10 (10.1%)

99 (100%)

Total

53 (27.6%)

69 (35.9%)

50 (26%)

20 (10.4%)

191 (100%)

Here, roughly equal proportions of men and women—14 per cent and 12 per cent respectively (three of each)—were categorised as ‘comfortable’ by the end of our


19

research. Nonetheless, a greater proportion of women ended up with an income below the subsistence minimum (64 per cent versus 46 per cent). With regard to education, our clearest finding concerns the advantage enjoyed by those with higher education. As can be seen in Table 1.6, less than a fifth of those with higher education ended up with an income below the subsistence minimum, while over a third ended up in our comfortable category. Our findings on education coincide with those from larger data sets. Using RLMS data from 1994–1996 Louise Grogan has shown that the highly educated have shorter unemployment durations (2000:86), while using data from the Taganrog surveys Katarina Katz has demonstrated that premium for university education increased between 1989 and 1993/1994. In the case of men, the premium for monthly wages increased from 17 per cent to 23 per cent, while in women’s case it grew from 25 per cent to 44 per cent (Katz, 2001:228–230).23 The only group that appears to have a particular disadvantage in our data is those with upper vocational education. On closer inspection, it was found that nearly half of those with upper vocational education falling into our poor and excluded categories came from our Ul’yanovsk sample of technikum graduates (nine of those with upper vocational education in the poor category and four of those in the excluded category). Their poor outcomes in terms of our categorisation reflect both their lack of experience, and, in the case of the excluded, the fact that parental financial support can facilitate a delay in labour market integration. The outcomes according to sector shown in Table 1.7 did not surprise us. Those in the state sector were most likely to receive a monthly wage below the subsistence minimum and least likely to earn an above average wage. Meanwhile, the self-employed were least likely to be poor and most likely to have monthly wages above the subsistence minimum. Those in the new private sector were rather polarised, with well over a third earning above the average wage, but almost a third earning poverty wages. This was in line with

Table 1.6 Outcomes of respondents by education (row percentages in brackets) Individual categorisation

Educational level Less than secondary

Secondary Lower vocational

Upper vocational

Unfinished higher

Higher

Comfortable

2 (4%)

2 (4%)

8 (15%)

9 (17%)

1 (2%)

30 (58%)

Coping

3 (4%)

5 (7%)

12 (17%)

10 (15%)

2 (3%)

37 (54%)

Poor

1 (2%)

6 (12%)

7 (14%)

19 (38%)

5 (10%)

12 (24%)

Excluded

1 (5%)

3 (15%)

3 (15%)

10 (50%)

0

3 (15%)

Total (n=191)

7 (4%)

16 (8%)

30 (16%)

48 (25%)

8 (4%)

82 (43%)


20

Table 1.7 Wage levels by sector at the final stage of research (n=144)a Sector

Wage level Above average

State Privatised New private Selfemployed

Above subsistence minimum

Below subsistence minimum

Total

6 (8%)

26 (37%)

39 (55%)

71 (100%)

9 (27%)

21 (64%)

3 (9%)

33 (100%)

13 (42%)

8 (26%)

10 (32%)

31 (100%)

4 (57%)

3 (43%)

7 (100%)

a The high number of missing cases here reflects the unwillingness of respondents to itemise their earnings.

our expectations, since our respondents had sharply divergent experiences of the new private sector. Some of these had matched the ideological portrayal of the economic reformers of the new private sector as a haven of high productivity and progress, while others would have been perfect fodder for propagandists seeking to illustrate the evils of dark, satanic capitalism. As one respondent, whose experience fell into the latter type put it, ‘It’s not work, but a flipping concentration camp. No weekends, no vacations, no sick pay. It’s not capitalism, but some kind of Stone Age!’ (4–14–1m). Our findings regarding state employment do not coincide with those from RLMS, in which mean wages in the state sector were higher than in the non-state sector in both 1992 and 1998 (Grogan, 2000:120). However, there is a considerable difference between the new private sector and privatised (former state) sector, which this finding disguises. Using data from the ISITO Household Survey, Veronika Kabalina and Simon Clarke (1999) found that those working in the new private sector earned 35 per cent more than those working in the traditional sectors once other variables had been controlled for (ibid.: 40). They also found that those who made transitions to employment in the new private sector or became self-employed were more likely to raise their pay than those who moved to traditional employment (ibid.: 42–45). Likewise, in our data transitions to the new private sector and self-employment were the most likely to offer an exit from poverty. We do not include an analysis of outcomes by branch (industry) here, since the numbers involved are too small to be meaningful. Meanwhile, age did not have a significant impact on outcomes. Those under 30 were slightly more likely to end up comfortable, but this is more likely to reflect the educational characteristics of our Ul’yanovsk sample, than an age effect. Those over 50, unsurprisingly, were slightly more likely to end up in our excluded group, but still the majority in this group ended up with an income above the subsistence minimum. This is in line with findings from the Taganrog surveys which did not find age to be a significant variable in explaining income (Katz, 2001:228–229).24


21

Male prosperity and female poverty? The following chapters of this book are devoted to explaining the relative success of our male and female respondents by looking at gender differences in motivation, behaviour, networks, as well as the constraints posed by discrimination. Nonetheless, a preliminary discussion of our findings is in order. In one sense they are entirely predictable: men in general earn more than women in Russia, and since we chose income as our main indicator of ‘success’, we were bound to discover that men did better. Looking at other things such as well-being might have given us different results. But since our project concerned employment strategy, we felt that focusing on the income levels attained by the end of the research was appropriate. Nonetheless, our results surprised us. In the light of the overall position of men and women in terms of employment and demographic indicators, and our observation during the research, we had expected men to outnumber women in our comfortable category, but also in our excluded category. When our expectations were confounded, we conjectured that this could reflect gender differences among the ‘missing’ cases. This idea turned out to have some merit. Our analysis of the respondents who dropped out of the research is reported here, because it provides the justification for one of the themes of the book: the particular problems men face in adapting to the new Russia. Our analysis of the missing cases serves both to introduce these problems and explain the attention devoted to male demoralisation in the following chapters. The explanation for the small number of ‘excluded’ men in our final categorisation does not lie in the attrition rates from the research per se. Only marginally more men were lost from the analysis than women—28 men (23.3 per cent) versus 21 women (17 per cent). But both the profile of men who dropped out and their reasons for doing so suggest that many of them, had they remained in the research until the final stage, would have ended up in our excluded category. This is especially clear when we look at the men who were lost from the Samara and Syktyvkar samples. The same is not true for women. In the following comparison of the male and female missing cases, the stories of the men are explored in some detail, because they highlight the main features of specifically masculine downward trajectories which are analysed in the following chapters. In Samara, ten men and only one woman dropped out of the research. It should immediately be noted that the woman (3–48, b. 1946) was in a horrendous situation, and was very likely to have ended up poor and out of work. But the same is also true of five of the men. One of them, Vladimir (3–22, b. 1947), reported during the second interview that, ‘For the first time in 53 years this winter I found out what hunger is, just real hunger…[when] the benefits that I got from the employment service were reduced to the minimum.’ His wife ‘couldn’t stand it’ and had left him to go to live with her mother. By the third interview he was exhibiting signs of mental illness, and behaved in an unpredictable and intimidating fashion during the interview. Dimitri (3–01, b. 1958) who remained in the research until the second stage, was also in a precarious position. A former driver, he had been forced to look for work after his status as an invalid was reduced from second to third category (meaning that his benefits were substantially reduced and he was deemed fit to work). Although he briefly held a very poorly paid job as a security guard for two months between the first and second stage of the research, he was very pessimistic about his chances of finding work, and could not reconcile himself


22

to the loss of his beloved profession. This position, as will be shown in Chapter 4, is one which often leads to discouragement and long-term economic inactivity. The other three respondents were young, but with equally poor prospects. Ilya (3–05, b. 1972) dropped out of the research before the second interview. At the time of the first interview he was living with his parents who were supporting him financially. His wife had divorced him, and was living separately with their child. She was in work, but Ilya showed little enthusiasm for job search: the interviewer noted that in her commentary that ‘it seems that he lacks any motivation to work’. In line with this, Ilya reported doing nothing to help his parents within the home. It is possible that this respondent would eventually have sought work, but there was little in the interview to suggest that this would occur. As discussed in Chapter 4, the trajectory of similar young male respondents who remained in the research for the whole period was one of occasional informal work combined with alcohol and/or drug abuse. Finally, respondents 3–11 and 3–12 were products of institutional childcare where, it is clear from the interviews, they had been very badly prepared for adult life. Lacking the family support which, as shown in Chapter 6, is often crucial in getting a first job, and is certainly required to pay for any higher education, these two young men were foundering. Neither had a residency permit (propiska) allowing them to live in Samara,25 and had problems with their hostel accommodation. The inadequacies of institutional child care constantly create such casualties in Britain, let alone Russia, so these two cases do not necessarily reveal much about the particular problems of Russian young men. The stories of Vladimir, Dmitri and Ilya, however, serve to highlight what we have found to be typical elements of men’s downward trajectories in Russia. The cases of the ‘missing men’ from Syktyvkar are even more dramatic. Eight of the men from Syktyvkar were missing from the final sample, as were five women. Of these, six men would have been likely to end up in our excluded category had they remained in the sample until the final stage of the research. But aside from the numbers, the most stark indication of the perilous position of poor men is found in the reasons why they were lost from our sample. Tragically, three of them died before the end of the research. All these deaths were untimely—one of the respondents was in his early fifties, while the other two died before reaching their mid-thirties. The oldest of them, Leonid, (4–42, b. 1949), was a former sports trainer, who, in the wake of the chaos and financial constraints afflicting the sporting infrastructure in the 1990s, had become a teacher of physical education, first in a school and then in a PTU. He found teaching no substitute for training, and was frustrated in his work. He deplored both the human relations and the working conditions of his last job at the PTU, and in particular complained that the building was not properly heated in winter. He left of his own volition in 1998, and was unemployed until the time of his death (before the second stage of our research conducted in spring 2000). This was a tragedy for a man who asserted that, ‘work is the most important thing in my life. There is nothing more valuable in life [than work].’ Leonid also faced severe financial problems in the months before his death: his wife was working as a dishwasher for 300 roubles a month (less than a third of the regional subsistence minimum at that time), while only one of his three co-resident grown children was in (low paid) work. He mentioned suffering from poor health, but reported being unable to afford the medicine he had been prescribed. Not surprisingly, Leonid was agitated, and


23

appeared to have lost hope. As he put it, ‘nothing is going to improve. Under our rulers nothing will improve and nothing will change’ (4–42–1). The two younger respondents faced equally difficult circumstances in the run-up to their deaths. Sasha (4–25, b. 1968), had, like several of our male respondents, been left by his wife after he lost his job. At the time of the first interview he was living with his father, and admitted to heavy drinking. By the second interview he was surviving on the proceeds of occasional unskilled work such as loading, and had become so desperate that he was considering serving in Chechnya in order to earn money. He eventually died of heart failure brought on during a drinking binge. Alexei (4–56, b. 1968), who died before the second stage of research, was also divorced, and likewise attributed the breakdown of his marriage to financial problems. Before his death he was living with his brother and sister, and working at a shop and restaurant for 500 roubles a month (just over half the regional subsistence minimum of that period). In addition to these early deaths, a further two respondents dropped out of the research as a result of illness. One, a former pilot (4–18, b. 1952), was seriously ill and had no hope of working again. Meanwhile, Vitali (4–60, b. 1970) had developed mental health problems by the third stage of research, and was scraping by on the edge of existence. Prior to this he had shown little inclination to work despite the fact that his wife was pregnant with their second child. In this case, it is difficult to tell whether Vitali’s difficulties were caused by poor mental health, or whether the latter was brought on by environmental factors such as poverty and alcohol abuse. Finally, respondent 4–50 would probably have ended up in our excluded category. He needed to work to supplement his small pension (which stood 486 roubles at stage two of our research, about half the subsistence minimum of that period), but had health problems which limited his choice of employment. Unemployed, poor, divorced and socially isolated, he had little chance of improving his situation, and felt lonely and without hope. The remaining Syktyvkar ‘missing’ men, however, were very unlikely to have augmented our excluded category. The situation of the five ‘missing women’ from Syktyvkar was mixed, but only two of them showed a level of desperation comparable to that of the men discussed above. About one of these very little can be said, because during the first interview she was found to be suffering from mental health problems. Another was in extreme poverty: at stage three she refused to be interviewed because her situation was so difficult she could not bear to talk about it. The third was a pensioner who was no longer looking for work, but was supported by her large family and remained active by making clothes for her grandchildren. It is possible that all three of these would have ranked among the excluded had they remained in the research, although the last was content with her situation, and not in any danger of demoralisation. Meanwhile, the remaining two were in a strong position. One was young and active (4–05), but could not be located because she had gone to visit her parents around the time of the final stage of the research. The other (4– 46) had finally felt able to stop looking for work at the third stage of the research, because she had been granted legal guardianship of her two granddaughters, whom she had been looking after for several years because of the alcoholism of their parents. She was receiving 2,000 roubles child benefit for each child on top of her pension (giving her an income above the average wage for the region). She declared, ‘I already don’t suit the purposes [of your study]. I won’t work again. Nothing can change in my life… Now everything is fine.’


24

This picture is to some extent mirrored in the Moscow sample. Seven men and six women were lost from the sample. One woman was ill, and the others were either untraceable or had lost interest in the project. Three men were also incidental losses. The other four cases, however, again support our arguments regarding male demoralisation. Three could not be contacted as a result of alcoholism: two of them (1–54 and 1–57) were reported by enterprise personnel officers to be engaged in drinking binges at the time of the interview (they were said to be ‘v zapoi’),26 while the other one (1–36) had completely given himself up to drink (polnost’yu spilsya) by the end of our research.27 The fourth (1–49) declined to be interviewed because of depression. At the time of the last interview, he was not working, and was rumoured to have moved to his house in the country. Finally, the situation of the missing respondents from Ul’yanovsk was unsurprisingly less dramatic. Nine women and three men were missing from the final categorisation. None of the women had any special problems—a couple had moved away (one to Samara, the other to Tol’yatti), others were on holiday at the time of the last interview, and some were just difficult to reach because of their working hours. Two of the men were likewise unlikely to have augmented our ‘excluded’ category. One was called up to the army and the other simply seemed to get bored of the research. Only one of the respondents appeared to be on a downward trajectory towards poverty and joblessness. Denis (2–05, b. 1976) was a lawyer who got a job at a district office of the public prosecution (having failed to get into the regional office). By the fourth stage of research, however, he had been sacked—it was rumoured for drunkenness—and had, according to his acquaintances, disappeared. Like Ilya (3–05) he had little desire to work, and had only taken the job in the office of public prosecution because it allowed him to escape from military service. This analysis of the missing cases from our sample suggests that our final categorisation of respondents underestimates the extent of male exclusion. If our estimates derived from this investigation of the missing cases are correct, their inclusion would have added a further sixteen men to our excluded category, and just four women. The number of men in our excluded category would then, as we expected, have been nearly double the number of women: 26 versus 14. Moreover, the levels of distress among the men discussed above was generally far greater than that found among the women, as is dramatically illustrated by the fact that three of the men died before the end of the research. This, indeed, provides tragic confirmation of our ideas regarding the vulnerability of men during the reform era. In addition, the analysis highlights a particular set of problems faced by men which will be picked up in later chapters. First, as discussed in Chapter 4, many men with a professional orientation to work, like Leonid and Dimitri, find it very difficult to cope when circumstances prevent them from continuing in their chosen line of work. Second, as will be seen in Chapter 2, the experience of Vladimir, Ilya, Sasha and Alexei, who were divorced by their wives in the wake of unemployment or poverty, is far from unique. Losing the status of main breadwinner leaves married men vulnerable to divorce, which in turn only exacerbates their problems. Third, as Chapter 6 shows, men’s social networks can be disrupted when they lose work. The risk of social isolation—which can have devastating consequences in contemporary Russia—is increased when men are divorced or unmarried, as women play an important role in servicing household


25

networks. Fourth, as Chapter 7 confirms, alcoholism is a particular risk factor for men. While men may turn to drink in the face of work and family problems, it notoriously only intensifies such difficulties and renders their solution less likely. It is also both promoted by and increases the risk of social isolation. Finally, the stories of Ilya and Denis also highlight the problems of a certain group of young men who opt out of mainstream society and often develop problems with alcohol or drugs. The characteristics of this group are discussed in Chapter 4.

The structure of the book Social norms play an important role in structuring gender differences in employment behaviour. Chapter 2 accordingly examines the gender norms that prevail in post-Soviet Russia, and highlights the way in which they influence men and women’s employment strategies. It also explores the implications of local gender ideologies for the well-being of men and women. In Chapter 3, Irina Kozina and Elena Zhidkova examine the constraints on men’s and women’s employment choices imposed by gender stereotypes, segregation and discrimination within the labour market. Chapter 4 tackles the issue of gender differences in work orientations, while Chapter 5 analyses gender differences in employment behaviour in Russia’s new labour market. Networking is a crucial skill in the contemporary Russian labour market, and Chapter 6 explores gender differences in network use and their implications. Finally, in Chapter 7 Marina Ilyina examines the event histories of our respondents during the research period. She identifies the occurrences likely to precipitate downward trajectories, and explores the way in which gender mediates the impact of critical life events.

Notes 1 The Gini coefficient increased from 0.26 in 1991 to 0.5 in 1993 (Clarke, 1999a: 120). 2 For an explanation of the phenomenon of ‘structural adjustment without mass unemployment’, see Clarke (1998). 3 It should be noted that Rosefielde blames the ‘Russian tradition’ of policymaking recklessness, rather than the policies of the Washington consensus, for the devastation (2000:1159). Given the record of neo-liberal policies elsewhere (see Stiglitz, 2002), this exoneration of Western neo-liberal policy advisers seems rather generous. 4 This may be an over-estimation, but the role of alcohol consumption as a significant variable influencing life expectancy in Russia is well recognised. The 3.2 year growth in male life expectancy in the period 1985–1987 is generally attributed to the anti-alcohol campaign which began in 1985 (Shkolnikov et al., 1998:1996). 5 Guy Standing does not name the minister, who made the comment during a discussion they had in 1993. 6 This has not prevented some researchers claiming that women were the primary victims of unemployment (Bridger et al., 1996:51; Buckley, 1997:4; Sperling, 1999:43). It seems that this results from a confusion regarding the relative reliability of the Labour Force Survey and registered unemployment statistics. In contrast to the LFS figures, the female registered unemployment rate has always been higher than the male. In 2002 the rates were 2.6 per cent and 1.1 per cent respectively (Goskomstat, 2003:130).


26

7 In 2002 they made up 48.6 per cent of the economically active population (Goskomstat, 2003:129). 8 This research design was shaped by the strengths of the regional teams. The Ul’yanovsk team had considerable experience in interviewing young people; the Syktyvkar team were already engaged in research on poverty, while the Komi republic was an area where a new form of means-testing was being piloted to identify the poor; the Samara team had done labour market research, including an analysis of the Employment Service with Simon Clarke; Marina Kiblitskaya of the Moscow team had valuable experience interviewing industrial workers, while her counterpart Irina Popova was already engaged in research on the fate of poorly-paid professionals. 9 For example, there are interesting issues regarding survival strategies of the poor, or the integration of our young specialists into the labour market which this book does not cover. We hope some of these issues will be dealt with in future publications. Such case studies will, of course, face the issue of regional specificity. 10 The pay of workers at the factory ranged from 500–2000 roubles; 1,093 roubles a month was the female average, as compared to 1,350 for men. 11 Only the specialists were paid on time. 12 I am grateful to Charles Walker for providing me with links to the best sources of internet information on Ul’yanovsk. 13 Post-graduate students cannot be called up, and meanwhile those with a Candidate’s degree are not obliged to serve. Thus, those completing their Candidate’s degree before their official registration as post-graduates ends can escape military service. Those over 28 cannot be called up. 14 Pirogov and Pronin report, for example, that across Russia 37 per cent of the Employment Fund is spent on unemployment benefits, though this proportion varies from 3.6 per cent in Moscow, to 67.34 per cent in Archangelskaya oblast’ (1999:197). They do not give a date or source for these figures. 15 For the views of Russian personnel officers on the Employment Service, see Clarke (1999b: 145–148). 16 This is a standard form of humiliation which was routinely practised by the holders of administrative power during the Soviet era. Paradoxically, one demand to emerge from workers during the 1917 Revolution was that managers use the polite vy form to address them rather than the disrespectful ty. 17 Selecting men proved far more difficult due to their scarcity on the list. 18 This method has the dubious ‘benefit’—lauded by Alexandrova and Braithwaite—of reducing the number of people eligible for assistance because, for example, ‘many of the families formerly eligible for social assistance…possess real estate, cars or other assets which could produce substantial additional income if leased, sold or used in some other income-producing way’ (2000:239). That is, the system requires benefit-seekers to prove almost total destitution. 19 The mean male monthly wage at stage four was 3,382 roubles as opposed to 2,140 for women. This was calculated on the basis of data from 144 respondents—84 women and 61 men. The missing data either indicated the lack of a ‘main’ job, or the unwillingness of the respondent to itemise their income. 20 The male mean monthly income was 3,357 roubles as compared with 2,287 for women. These means are based on the full sample at stage four. 21 State statistics on employment in different sectors (by property type) are not divided by gender. 22 The ILO definition used by most labour force surveys, including that in Russia, is that a person is considered to be employed if they have done at least one hour of paid work during the reference week, or have been away from work.


27

23 The premium in hourly wages showed a similar increase for women, but not for men (Katz, 2001:230). 24 The expectation of economic theory would be that income would rise with age, due to the increased experience (human capital). Given the huge shock to the Russian economy during transition, in which much Soviet experience was rendered redundant, it is not surprising that this effect is not clearly observed. 25 Although the residency permit system is now illegal under the terms of the Russian constitution, a number of cities still operate this system. 26 To be ‘v zapoi’ has both social and medical meanings. In medical terms it means the continuous consumption of large volumes of spirits for days or even weeks. In social terms, a person who is ‘v zapoi’ usually withdraws from society. S/he stops going to work, and sometimes leaves the family. 27 This is an advanced stage of alcoholism, in which the personal and social identity of a person is virtually destroyed. To say that a person has ‘polnost’yu spilsya’ is to say that they are considered to be socially dead.

References Alexandrova, A. and Braithwaite, J. (2000) ‘Targeting poverty benefits in Russia: reality-based alternatives to income-testing’, in S.Hutton and G.Redmond (eds) Poverty in Transition Economies, London: Routledge, pp. 228–247. Arabsheibani, R. and Lau, L. (1999) ‘Mind the gap: an analysis of gender wage differences in Russia’, Labour: Review of Labour Economics and Industrial Relations, 13, 4:761–775. Ashwin, S. (1999) Russian Workers: The Anatomy of Patience, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Ashwin, S. and Bowers, E. (1997) ‘Do Russian women want to work?’, in M.Buckley (ed.) PostSoviet Women: From the Baltic to Central Asia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 21–37. Ashwin, S. and Lytkina, T. (2004) ‘Men in crisis in Russia: the role of domestic marginalisation’, Gender and Society, 18, 2:189–206. Bobak, M., McKee, M., Rose, R. and Marmot, M. (1999) ‘Alcohol consumption in a national sample of the Russian population’, Addiction, 94, 9:857–866. Bridger, S., Kay, R. and Pinnick, K. (1996) No More Heroines? Russia, Women and the Market, London: Routledge. Buckley, M. (1997) ‘Victims and agents: gender in post-Soviet states’, in M.Buckley (ed.) PostSoviet Women: From the Baltic to Central Asia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 3–16. Burawoy, M., Krotov, P. and Lytkina, T. (2000a) ‘Involution and destitution in capitalist Russia’, Ethnography, 1:43–65. ——(2000b) ‘Domestic involution: how women organise survival in a north Russian city’, in V.Bonnell and G.Breslauer (eds) Russia in the New Century: Stability or Disorder? Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Burchardt, T., Le Grande, J. and Piachaud, D. (2002) ‘Degrees of exclusion: developing a dynamic, multidimensional measure’, in J.Hills, J.Le Grande and D. Piachaud (eds) Understanding Social Exclusion, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Clarke, S. (1998) ‘Structural adjustment without mass unemployment: lessons from Russia’, in S.Clarke (ed.) Structural Adjustment without Mass Unemployment: Lessons from Russia, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 9–86. ——(1999a) New Forms of Employment and Household Survival Strategies in Russia, Coventry and Moscow: ISITO/CCLS.


28

——(1999b) The Formation of a Labour Market in Russia, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. ——(2000) ‘Measurement and definitions of poverty in Russia’, in D.Gordon and P. Townsend (eds) Breadline Europe: The Measurement of Poverty, Bristol: Policy Press. ——(2002) Making Ends Meet in Contemporary Russia: Secondary Employment, Subsidiary Agriculture and Social Networks, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Connor, W. (2000) ‘The world of work: employment, unemployment and adaptation’, in M.Field and J.Twigg (eds) Russia’s Torn Safety Nets: Health and Social Welfare during the Transition, Basingstoke: Macmillan. Fan, C., Overland, J. and Spagat, M. (1999) ‘Human capital, growth and inequality in Russia’, Journal of Comparative Economics, 27:618–643. Gerber, T. (2003) ‘Loosening links? School-to-work transitions and institutional change in Russia since 1970’, Social Forces, 82, 1:241–276. Goskomstat (2000) Sotsial’noe polozhenie i uroven’ zhizni naseleniya Rossii, Moscow: Goskomstat Rossii. ——(2002) Demograficheskii ezhegodnik Rossii 2002, Moscow: Goskomstat Rossii. ——(2003) Rossiiskii statisticheskii ezhegodnik 2003, Moscow: Goskomstat Rossii. Grogan, L. (2000) Labour Market Transitions in Eastern and Western Europe (Tinbergen Institute Research Series), Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam. Kabalina, V. and Clarke, S. (1999) ‘Novyi chastnyi sektor: zanyatost’ i trudovye otnosheniya’, in V.Kabalina and S.Clarke (eds) Zanyatost’ i povedenie domokhozyaistv: adaptatsiya k usloviyam perekhoda k rynochnoi ekonomike v Rossii, Moscow: Rosspen, pp. 19–107. Karelina, M. (1996) ‘Employment of the population of Samara’, in Institute for Comparative Labour Relations Research and Centre for Comparative Labour Studies, The Restructuring of Employment and the Formation of a Labour Market in Russia, Warwick: Centre for Comparative Labour Studies, pp. 228–239. Katz, K. (2001) Gender, Work and Wages in the Soviet Union: A Legacy of Discrimination, Basingstoke: Palgrave. Kay, R. (2000) Russian Women and their Organizations: Gender, Discrimination and Grassroots Women’s Organizations, 1991–96, Basingstoke: Macmillan. Kiblitskaya, M. (1999) ‘Gendernye strategii zanyatosti (Itogovyi otchet pervogo etapa)’, mimeo. ——(2000) ‘Russia’s female breadwinners: the changing subjective experience’, in S. Ashwin (ed.) Gender, State and Society in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia, London: Routledge, pp. 55–70. Lytkina, T. (2001) ‘Raspredelenie vlasti v sem’e kak faktor strategii zanyatosti i organizastii domokhozyaistva’, Rubezh, 16/17:50–65. Nemtsov, A. (2002) ‘Alcohol-related human losses in Russia in the 1980s and 1990s’, Addiction, 97:1413–1425. Newell, A. and Reilly, B. (1996) ‘The gender wage gap in Russia: some empirical evidence’, Labour Economics, 3, 3:337–356. Pirogov, G. and Pronin, S. (1999) ‘The Russian case: social policy concerns’, in Y. Atal (ed.) Poverty in Transition and Transition in Poverty: Recent Developments in Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Georgia, Russia, Mongolia, Oxford: Berghahn Books/UNESCO, pp. 177–222. Rosefielde, S. (2001) ‘Premature deaths: Russia’s radical economic transition in Soviet perspective’, Europe–Asia Studies, 35, 8:1159–1176. Rotkirch, A. (2000) The Man Question: Loves and Lives in Late 20th Century Russia, Helsinki: University of Helsinki. Shkolnikov, V., Cornia, G., Leon, D. and Meslé, F. (1998) ‘Causes of the Russian mortality: evidence and interpretations’, World Development, 26, 11:1995–2011. Sperling, V. (1999) Organising Women in Contemporary Russia: Engendering Transition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Standing, G. (1996) ‘Social protection in Central and Eastern Europe: a tale of slipping anchors and torn safety nets’, in G.Esping-Andersen (ed.) Welfare States in Transition: National Adaptations in Global Economies, London: Sage.


29

Stiglitz, J. (2002) Globalization and its Discontents, London: Allen Lane. Tartakovskaya, I. (2002) ‘Muzhchiny na rynke truda’, Sotsiologicheskii zhurnal, 3: 112–125. Zohoori, N. et al. (1998) ‘Monitoring the economic transition in the Russian Federation and its implications for the demographic crisis—The Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey’, World Development, 26, 11:1977–1993.

2 The post-Soviet gender order Imperatives and implications Sarah Ashwin

At moments of rapid political and economic change, deeply-rooted norms and dispositions play a crucial role in shaping the society that emerges from the transformation. They guide the responses of individuals to their changing environment, and in this way features of the ‘old’ society are often reproduced within the ‘new’. The Bolsheviks, for example, wanted to reconstitute relations between men, women and the state, yet past patriarchal norms and practices were reproduced in many areas (not least in the thinking and behaviour of Bolshevik leaders). Unlike the Bolsheviks, the marketrevolutionaries of the 1990s did not have a particular agenda with regard to gender relations. Some of them favoured a supposedly ‘traditional’ model in which women would return to the home, but most were not concerned with gender relations, which were now considered a matter for the individual rather than the state. In the absence of a strong state agenda, past norms and dispositions were likely to be crucial in shaping post-Soviet gender relations. Our focus in this book is limited to the labour market and the household to the extent that it shapes participation in the labour market. But in this area, no less than in others, we consider that norms and dispositions derived from the Soviet past play an important role in structuring behaviour. In this chapter, I begin by outlining the salient norms likely to underlie differences in the responses of men and women to the new Russian labour market. I then examine the extent to which these influence labour market behaviour and outcomes. This analysis is based on a non-determinist understanding of gender as ‘something evoked, created and sustained day-by-day’ (Thompson and Walker, 1989:865), which men and women must continually ‘do’ (West and Zimmerman, 1987). Gender is produced in a particular cultural context, so that while in one sense ‘it is individuals who “do” gender…it is a situated doing, carried out in the virtual or real presence of others who are presumed to be oriented to its production’ (ibid.: 126). The behaviour of men and women, and the way in which they ‘do’ gender, is guided by local norms (which in turn can be influenced by behaviour). This is not the place to examine which of these has ultimate causal priority. For our purposes, it is sufficient to note that local norms governing gender, or ‘gender ideologies’ as they are sometimes called, play an important role in shaping the decisions of men and women regarding employment and the household. As the anthropologist Henrietta Moore has argued: economic processes such as the differentiation of tasks by gender, discussions between husbands and wives over income distribution…are actually a set of practical activities which operationalise gender

The post-Soviet gender order: imperatives and implications

31

ideologies. They are therefore in some sense the outcome of local ideas regarding the appropriate behaviour of men and women. (1994:92) The influence of gender ideology on behaviour has recently been recognised in literature using the concept of distinct ‘gender orders’, to explain different patterns of male and female employment between nations and between cultures.1 For example, the idea of different gender orders is employed by the researchers Angela Dale and Clare Holdsworth (1998) to explain why, even though both sets of women face the same institutional constraints, British ethnic minority women tend to work full-time, while white women are more likely to work part-time. The idea of the gender order has also been built on by Birgit Pfau-Effinger, who uses a version of it to explain cross-national differences in patterns of full-time and part-time working among women (1998) as well as divergent attitudes to maternal employment (1999).

The Soviet gender order and its legacy What are the dominant local ideas regarding the proper role of men and women which shape our respondents’ reactions to change? This section outlines these, beginning with an account of the Soviet gender order, which continues to exercise a significant influence on our respondents.2 It considers the way in which Soviet norms and practices are being reproduced, focusing on four areas: (1) work; (2) breadwinning; (3) household management; and (4) child-rearing, using responses to a number of questions regarding gender norms which we asked all respondents. As already mentioned, the Bolsheviks had clear ideas regarding the way in which gender relations should be reconstituted. They promoted and institutionalised a distinctive gender order in which the roles of men and women were defined according to the perceived needs of the communist state. Work was central to the Soviet project and was defined by the 1918 constitution as ‘a duty of all citizens of the republic’ (Akhapkin, 1970:156). Work was seen not only as an economic duty of men and women, but was also considered crucial to their social and political integration. Women, however, were also deemed to have a demographic duty to the state, and correspondingly their prescribed role was that of ‘worker-mothers’. At the same time, they were expected to be household managers, since early Bolshevik dreams of the transfer of domestic functions from the private to the public sphere were never realised except to a limited extent in the realm of child care. None of the Bolsheviks, not even Aleksandra Kollantai, challenged the idea of domestic work as inalienably feminine (Ashwin, 2000:11–12). This acceptance of supposedly natural sexual difference on the part of the new communist elite informed both the terms on which women were integrated into the labour force—as second-class workers (Filtzer, 1992)—and what was expected of them as wives and mothers. Men, meanwhile, had an at once more limited and higher status role to play. They were to serve as leaders, managers, soldiers and workers. In the early post-revolutionary period, the new Bolshevik authorities perceived the traditional patriarch as a bulwark of the old regime, a little Tsar whose influence needed to be restricted. Initially, the state


32

struggle with the patriarch was conducted through a combination of legislation and coercion which served to undermine male prerogative within the family (Kukhterin, 2000). After the compromise with the new Soviet family in the 1930s this campaign was relaxed, but the private power of men continued to be regarded with suspicion. This distrust found its expression in a notable silence about men’s domestic role: while mothers were glorified, Soviet men were not allowed to compete with the father-figures who led the Party. Men’s self-realization was thus to be confined to the public sphere, where their dominance continued to be seen as legitimate and ‘natural’. The collapse of the Soviet state removed the institutional and ideological underpinnings of Soviet-approved gender relations and identities. First, work is no longer a state-imposed duty. Economic inactivity is an option for both men and women, while unemployment has become an unwelcome reality in Russia. Now, rather than emphasising women’s duty to work, members of the political elite are more likely to argue that in an era of unemployment women should leave the jobs for the boys.3 Second, motherhood has been redefined as a private responsibility. While in the Soviet era motherhood was portrayed as a service to the state, and recognised as such through a social policy which supported the mother and child unit as an indivisible whole, now the state has reneged on its paternal role as the protector of mother and child (Issoupova, 2000). This, of course, implies a greater pressure on men to perform the role of providers. These changes in state policy might appear to be conducive to a return to the so-called traditional family consisting of a male breadwinner and non-working wife,4 but the fact that they have occurred in a period of economic collapse has dramatically limited the potential of most ordinary men to provide for their families. Despite these changes, our data suggest that our respondents—old and young alike— still tend to endorse the Soviet model of gender relations. To begin with work: it was widely predicted after the collapse of the Soviet state that women would willingly relinquish the ‘double burden’ of work and household management by returning to the home (for example, Funk, 1993:322; Lissyutkina, 1993:276). The views of our respondents, however, sup-port the findings of other studies suggesting that work is crucial to Russian women’s sense of identity; provides them with a sense of meaning, of being socially useful, and is a source of companionship and support, even when the work itself is unpleasant and provides little intrinsic satisfaction (Ashwin and Bowers, 1997; Gruzdeva, 1995; Kiblitskaya, 2000a; Zdravomyslova, 1996). In response to the question ‘Would you continue to work if you had the financial possibility of not working?’, over 80 per cent of women said that they would continue to work, as against 72 per cent of our male respondents. Most interestingly, our younger female respondents were no less committed to work. Some 90 per cent of those under 35 (as opposed to 80 per cent of men in the same group) said that they would work if they had the financial possibility of not working. Our largest group of young respondents are the graduates from the university and technical training institute in Ul’yanovsk who, having invested in their education, would be expected to be more committed to work than those who are less educated. Indeed, 93 per cent of female respondents in this group said that they would work if they had the financial possibility of not working, as opposed to 74 per cent of men in the same group. Nonetheless, between 75 and 100 per cent of female respondents under 35 in the other city samples gave the same answer.


33

Despite women’s desire to remain in work, men are still expected to be the main breadwinners. Asked who should take primary responsibility for providing for the family, 72 per cent of our female respondents, and 79 per cent of their male counterparts said that it should be the man. As Marina Kiblitskaya (2000b) has argued, the ideology of the male breadwinner was preserved in Soviet society because, although men were rarely the sole earners in families (Soviet wage scales assumed dual-income families), they tended to earn more than women. Thus, the breadwinner (kormilets) in Russian household is the person who earns the highest income—a view confirmed by statistical analysis of what gave respondents in the 1998 ISITO household survey the status of breadwinner in the eyes of other household members (Kozina, 2000). Being the primary earner is very important to men. Not only is it considered a duty, it also defines men’s status within the household (Ashwin and Lytkina, 2004). This issue constantly recurred as a preoccupation in our interviews with both our male and female respondents. While men are expected to perform as primary breadwinners, women are expected to take primary responsibility for the home. Some 65 per cent of women and 47 per cent of men in our study thought that women should bear primary responsibility for running the household, while 32 per cent of women and 43 per cent of men said that this should be a joint responsibility. We were somewhat surprised by these findings, which showed less support for the female-run household than we were anticipating. But looking at the qualitative responses to these questions, we concluded that a preference for ‘joint’ responsibility often implied a strict division of labour in which most of the tasks in the household were defined as ‘female’. This was especially visible in the interviews with men, of which the following is typical: Who should take primary responsibility for running the household? Both should take responsibility for running the household. What’s your view of how the tasks should be divided up? There are some kind of unofficial male duties, anything concerning the maintenance of the flat, repairs and other things like that. But as regards the comfort of the flat, the design of the flat—that’s up to the wife. (3–22–1) Women are often referred to as the creators of ‘comfort’—a role which, unlike ‘maintenance’, requires regular tidying, cleaning and washing. The role of men, meanwhile, is far more limited. In modern flats and urban houses, the only work that men see as unequivocally their own is carrying out repairs and, in some cases, taking out the rubbish. As one respondent acknowledged: A man is a man, and where there’s dishes to be washed up and cooking and clearing up to be done—that’s a woman’s job. And then in the town, of course, it’s for a woman to clear up, wash and cook—that’s all up to the woman. In the town you haven’t even got the upkeep of the house and garden, or any animal husbandry. But, look, in the countryside—there you’ve got the upkeep of the house and garden and perhaps animals, there you won’t get by without a man. There in the countryside, of course, the


34

man plays the primary role in the household and the woman—she’s a helper. (4–49–2) This respondent highlights the fact that in rural Russia men do still have a role to play, as is also the case in urban ‘private’ (wooden, often self-built) houses which usually lack modern conveniences such as running water. In the latter there is a significant amount of ‘male’ work to be done: water must be fetched, the boiler lit and tended to, while in rural areas added to these duties, as the respondent highlights, are tasks connected with domestic food production such as maintaining outhouses and slaughtering animals.5 Nonetheless, the vast majority of the Russian population live in modern urban accommodation,6 and as the respondent all but admits, given the currently accepted domestic division of labour, men are virtually redundant within this type of dwelling. It is therefore not surprising that studies of the domestic division of labour in Russia have repeatedly shown that women do the vast majority of housework.7 Bringing up children is perceived as a joint responsibility by our respondents. Some 76 per cent of our male respondents and 79 per cent of their female counterparts said that this duty should be shared. In this area there appears to be a gulf between aspiration and reality, however, since 55 per cent of male respondents with children reported that a woman in their household took primary responsibility for their upbringing, as did 66 per cent of our female respondents with children. This probably results from the distinction that is made between bringing up children and looking after them when young. Unfortunately, we did not pose a question which captured this difference, but our qualitative data suggest it is women who are primarily responsible for caring for children, as opposed to educating them. At the same time, the idea that women should combine work and motherhood remains strong. Asked what was the best care for their child, only a quarter of both men and women opted for the statement ‘to be at home with mother’. In line with this, kindergartens are still widely used. In 2002, 48 per cent of children under 7 were in kindergartens, as opposed to 57 per cent in 1989. In 1989 the kindergartens were oversubscribed, whereas in 2002 14 per cent of places were vacant.8 However, it seems likely that this decline in the use of pre-school child care reflects the reduced purchasing power of Russian households rather than a change in values. The gender ‘template’ for work and family life which informs our respondents’ daily practice thus bears a strong resemblance to the model endorsed by the Soviet state. Both men and women should work, though men should take primary responsibility for breadwinning. Women should take primary responsibility for the household, and men should ‘help’ in particular by performing masculine tasks. Mothers are not expected to withdraw from the labour market permanently, and working mothers are not subject to social sanction.

Gender ideologies in practice What are the implications for our respondents of the norms outlined above? How do they influence their employment behaviour, and impact on their lives? The following sections consider this, looking first at men, and then at women. The discussion aims to highlight


35

the way in which local gender ideologies structure patterns of behaviour which are discussed in later chapters. Meanwhile, the discussion of outcomes focuses on the implications of the gender order for the well-being of men and women. Men: the pressure on providers As has been noted, the idea that men should be the main breadwinners remains strong. How did this influence the trajectories of our male respondents? Our data suggests that its implications are double-edged. On the one hand, it acts as a spur to labour market activity, and the fact that men are supposed to earn money renders withdrawal from the labour market problematic. On the other hand, for this very reason, the norm can have negative consequences in an era of economic instability. In contemporary Russia both men and women are liable to endure periods of dependence on the state or family members, but this poses dangers for men who are supposed to perform as breadwinners. Shorn of the breadwinner role, the basis of a man’s integration into the household and wider society is undermined. Before outlining the impact on behaviour, it is worth mentioning that the male breadwinner norm may also have an influence on wage levels. Wagesetting is not merely an economic process but also ‘deeply political and cultural’ (Figart et al., 2002:4). As Deborah Figart and her colleagues show, the decisions of economic actors are influenced by implicit wage theories, which in turn are shaped by the wider social environment. In Russia, the male breadwinner norm forms the normative backdrop to employers’ decisions regarding pay levels, and this is likely to benefit men but harm working women. Exploring this interesting proposition is beyond the scope of our research, but the evidence presented in Chapter 3 regarding the perceptions of both employers and employees regarding the relative value of men and women as workers would tend to support this view. The behaviour of men seems to be influenced by their perceived obligation to provide in a number of ways. This influence can be seen most poignantly in the comments of men in our sample who talked about their desire to begin relationships, but who were held back by their feelings of financial inadequacy. The following exchange from our final interview with Ivan (3–15, b. 1960) illustrates the way in which the male breadwinner norm shapes decision-making, while also providing compelling evidence of the pressures it generates in a period of economic crisis. Ivan had met a woman with whom he appeared to have formed a close and loving relationship, but he felt unable to propose to her. He spoke candidly about his hopes and fears with the interviewer, whom by the end of our research he knew quite well: Have you got married? I’ve already told you, no. Although…I’d like to. So you’re planning to marry? I need to get myself soundly on my feet first. What do you mean ‘soundly’? …Look let’s just imagine that you and I decided to marry, but I immediately tell you that I’ve got [just] two roubles in my pocket! Are you going to marry me?


36

If I loved you I would… Love today [pauses] I just don’t understand what people mean by love. Yeah, all right, before it meant something. So you mean if you’ve got two roubles, then I won’t marry you, and if you’ve 200 then I will? It’s all romanticism. It works out that now everyone needs money, and not love. And what do I need your money for if I can earn it myself? There’s an old saying, ‘It’s heaven in the hovel when you’re with the one you love’ [‘S milym i rai v shalashe’]. I don’t believe it any more. It’s already time to throw it out of our lexicon and out of the Russian language. Now nobody thinks like that, now everyone needs money. But why do I need your money if I earn my own? And what does that make me, a gigolo or something, if I’m living at your expense? … For me it’s shameful… What am I—not a man [muzhik] or something? Well, now, as a rule, both [men and women] work… They can… But I think that a man should earn more. (3–15–4) This extract clearly reveals both the positive and negative dimensions of the ideal of the male breadwinner. On the one hand, it stimulates Ivan’s determination to get himself ‘soundly’ on his feet. But on the other, it induces doubts not only about the future of his relationship, but also about his own identity: is he a ‘muzhik’, a real man, or just a gigolo? As will be discussed in Chapter 4, the precise influence of the male breadwinner norm on men’s labour market behaviour varies to some degree with their work orientation. Most conspicuously, some of those with a strong professional work orientation are more influenced by their desire to maintain their professional attachment than their social obligation to provide. For example, several of our professionally oriented men ended up dependent on their wives, at least for a period, while one, an academic (1–27) was supported in his poorly paid profession by his daughter. As will be seen, in all these cases this willingness to violate local norms can be put down to the determination of these men to retain their professional integrity. A small number of young men, whose labour market behaviour was primarily informed by their aversion to work, were also relatively unaffected by the male breadwinner norm. Ilya (3–05), whose case was discussed in Chapter 1, provides a good illustration of this type. But the majority of those with a predominantly instrumental attitude to work are strongly influenced by the male breadwinner norm, as are a substantial proportion of those with a professional orientation to work (using the classifications of Chapter 4, just over half of those we identified as having a professional work orientation also had a keen sense of their responsibility to provide for their families). In general, men’s need to fulfil their perceived obligations as primary earners can be said to act as a stimulus to labour market activism. For example, as Chapter 5 will show, men are more likely to carry out supplementary work on a regular basis than are women. A key reason for this is that performing additional work in order to supplement household income is perceived to be one of the duties of the primary breadwinner. Carrying out


37

supplementary work is also a way, as will be discussed in Chapter 4, of reconciling the need to support a family with the desire to maintain professionalism and status: men with poorly paying jobs providing professional satisfaction or status often use secondary employment as a way of fulfilling their obligations as breadwinners. Meanwhile, as discussed in Chapters 4 and 5, the level of pay men are prepared to accept is also informed by their presumed status as primary providers. Overall, the ideal of the male breadwinner can be said to form the unavoidable normative backdrop to men’s labour market behaviour, even for those who are unable or unwilling to live up to it. The flip side of this is felt when men fail to do what is expected of them. Most notably, failing to perform as a primary breadwinner can threaten the relationships of married or cohabiting men. Three of the men in our sample were divorced during the research period, while one was left by his partner. Three of these four break-ups were attributed by the men concerned to their failure to provide.9 This alerted us to the risk of exclusion from the household faced by men who lose the status of main providers (Ashwin and Lytkina, 2004).10 Here I develop this analysis further on the basis of an examination of all the cases of ‘failed male breadwinners’ in our data at the final stage of the research. In all, there were fifteen (nine cases involving partners of our female respondents, and six involving our male respondents).11 Analysis of all the interviews with the respondents concerned revealed that the failure of men to conform with local norms did not automatically lead to tension, though it did carry such a risk. Overall, in eight of the cases it appeared to lead to strain (five of the cases involving our female respondents, and half of those involving male respondents). The reasons why this subversion of local norms proved highly disruptive in some cases but not in others are obviously complex—the quality of the initial relationship plays an important role, for example, and this and related issues were outside the scope of our enquiry. Some things are clear, however. Most importantly, engagement in the life of the household seems to protect the relationships of dependent or low-earning men. The cases in which the failure of the man to fulfil the role of main provider did not cause problems appeared to be those in which the female breadwinner felt supported and part of a team, rather than that she was battling alone to keep the household running. For example, one of our successful female entrepreneurs was earning twice the income of her husband by the end of the research, but expressed not a trace of resentment about this. As she reported: He supported me in everything… And in general, perhaps if he hadn’t supported me I wouldn’t have done anything. He kind of said that everything would work out for me and…even if didn’t work out, it wasn’t a disaster, I’d know that I’d tried. That is, I understood that for myself but I wanted someone to say it to me. That, at least, you’d know that you tried to do something. (4–48–4) In addition to providing such moral support, the husband of this respondent was also helpful at home, and his stable income had provided the safety net which had allowed our respondent to take the risk of starting her own business. The importance of male engagement within the household can be even more strikingly illustrated by the case of a


38

couple living in severe poverty. The man concerned, Anton, was unemployed, while his wife, our respondent, Natalya, was working as a hospital orderly. Their diet seemed to consist mainly of home-grown potatoes, and poverty was severely disrupting their lives— they were, for example, unable to afford to repair their fridge when it broke down and at the end of the research it was still not working. Their relationship, however, remained strong. During one of the interviews the couple concerned mentioned that contravention of the male breadwinner norm often led to relationship breakdown and analysed why it hadn’t in their case: NATALYA: Yes, it hasn’t spoilt our relationship, we somehow calm each other down. Especially me him. ANTON: You see, we’ve got a dacha, if I’m out of work, I go there and do some tilling, weed the flower beds… Those who live in modern flats, of course, what does that mean—that the husband is at home all day, that is really it. Constant scandal. I talk to the men at work and they are constantly moaning. (4–55–3) This couple’s relationship was exceptionally loving, and they were both remarkable individuals.12 Nonetheless, the quotation highlights a key reason why they were able to preserve their bond in the face of adversity: their sense of common endeavour. Natalya knew that Anton was trying to find work, and that in the meantime he was doing what he could to contribute to the household. Anton’s comments, however, also highlight the difficulty that many men face in finding a role when they are no longer the main earner: in flats there is nothing for them to do. As was pointed out in the previous section, given the currently accepted division of labour, it is difficult for men to find a role within the urban Russian household. There are few ‘masculine’ tasks to perform in modern flats, while men’s attempt to take on ‘feminine’ tasks do not always meet with female approval (Ashwin and Lytkina, 2004). This means that they are in danger of seeming superfluous once they cease to bring in money. Ivan pinpointed the problem, when analysing the reasons for his divorce (which occurred before our research began). He said that the problem lay in the fact that his wife had begun to earn more than him, but it was clear that this erosion of his breadwinner role had rendered him redundant in the household: I brought home the money and gave it to my wife. Of course, if [we were buying] something big, then yes: we discussed it in advance, kind of saved up. And where the rest went—I didn’t poke my nose into that business. I took my dinner money and that was all. Perhaps that was bad really. Now I regret it. You need to kind of take an interest, it brings you closer together, makes the family more solid, than when she discusses everything with her mother and I’m just the person who puts the money on the bedside table. That is, there wasn’t any solidarity. (3–15–1) Ivan’s diagnosis of his marital difficulties supports the analysis developed above, but it also highlights the difficulty of developing ‘solidarity’ within the context of the


39

prevailing gender division of labour. Whilst in the countryside and on dachas ‘you won’t get by without a man’, many urban women find it all too easy to do so.13 The case of Lida (4–45, b. 1953), whose husband was out of work for the duration of our study, highlights further dangers of male disengagement from the household. When men are not working, the lack of a legitimate male role within the urban Russian household may contribute to another source of ‘scandal’: alcoholism.14 During her first meeting with Lida, the interviewer, Tatyana Lytkina, noticed the lack of ‘solidarity’ shown by the respondent’s husband. She recorded in her notes on the interview, ‘Her husband lay on the sofa. He opened the door, had a look and ran away. My impression was that he was untidy and lacking in respect for his wife, he was smoking right in the room’—the latter being a cardinal social sin in small Russian flats in which living rooms double up as bedrooms. This proved to be a perceptive comment, for by the time of the second interview Lida had separated from her husband, who had gone to live with his mother. According to the respondent, the problem resulted from his having nothing to do, which in turn had led him to drink: But look then when he stopped work, I began to shout at him because he wasn’t bringing in any money. He was all day at home, I was at work, I didn’t see it. I came home, and he was drunk. So then he drank, and then, when he went to his mother’s, at the beginning it seemed he didn’t drink, and then he began [again]. (4–45–3) Of course, drinking is a huge social problem in Russia which is not only caused by men’s status in the household. But the latter certainly does nothing to help them, as it means that any labour market problems are compounded by marginality within the household. Finally, it is not surprising that the analysis of the marriages in which women were the main breadwinners revealed that alcohol abuse by the man dramatically increased the chances of tension and relationship breakdown. But if men’s drinking is often the last straw for frustrated wives, the removal of a restraining feminine influence can literally spell the end for drinking men: as noted in the introduction, one of our failing breadwinners, a young man in his early thirties, drank himself to death in the aftermath of the break-up of his marriage. Male mortality rates suggest that this is not an isolated incident. The male breadwinner norm is part of a wider gender order. It underlies and reinforces men’s advantage in the labour market, while at the same time reinforcing a gender division of labour which has the effect of pushing men to the margins of the household. The latter can have very serious consequences when men fail to live up to their expected role as providers—something which is an ever-present possibility in Russia’s unstable economy. The couples who are able to withstand these pressures seem to be working against the grain, for the (post-)Soviet gender order does not serve to promote ‘solidarity’ between men and women, but rather tends to polarise them. This does nothing to help men. As Lida said of her husband during his drinking binge: ‘I wouldn’t say that he’s enjoying it. It’s bad for him too. He’s unhappy too, of course’ (4–45–2).


40

Women: post-Soviet superwomen Women’s prescribed role is much wider than men’s: they are supposed to work, run households and bear children. Women’s attachment to the labour market has only been strengthened by the economic crisis. Women continue to work, and their contributions to the household budget are increasingly vital for household survival. The association of women with the private sphere of the household, meanwhile, has both positive and negative implications. On the one hand, it is one of the things that underlies women’s secondary status in the labour market. As will be shown in the next chapter, the idea that women are ‘second-class’ employees helps shape the demand for male and female labour during economic restructuring in ways that do not favour women. But on the other hand, women’s embeddedness within the household is a source of strength, which provides them with a sense of meaning outside the unpredictable world of work and binds them into a web of relations which can sustain them in times of trouble. This section first discusses the importance of women’s work in an era in which economic independence is increasingly valued, and then examines women’s role in the household and the implications of this for their position in the labour market, as well as for their well-being. As was seen above, the vast majority of women in our sample wanted to work. And although the ideological pressure for women to work has lessened, their role as breadwinners has become increasingly important. As will be seen in Chapter 4, some women still work primarily for social reasons, because, in line with past norms, they consider that it is ‘natural’ and right for women to have a public life, which means, in the impoverished post-Soviet civic context, working. But a greater proportion of women see their wages as crucial to the survival of their households. They recognise the importance of a dual income in an era of instability, while a substantial minority also consider that women’s financial contribution to the household is more reliable than that of men. This scepticism regarding men seems to have been transmitted to the younger generation of women, as can be seen in the following quotations, the first from an unmarried woman just entering her forties at the time of the interview, the second from a single woman in her early twenties: Well, I do, of course, have a desire to create a family, but it’s pretty problematic because now men basically are like leeches, they try, if they know you’ve got some material blessings, or even just a flat, they try to attach themselves, regardless of whether you need him or not, they’re just egotists. (3–32–1, b. 1959) Who should take responsibility for running the household? The woman, probably. Men are all stupid. They don’t know how to manage money. A woman should do that… Yes, of course, I would like a husband to support me, but somehow, somehow when you look at the men around it doesn’t lead you to bank on it. Why? You have to be self-reliant.


41

And if you have a husband, will you still be self-reliant? All the same you need some kind of reserve, even if you’re part of a family. First, I don’t think I could sit at home for long. Secondly, all the same, anything could happen, for instance,…he leaves you and you’re left with the children. All the same you need a job. And if, for example, your husband earns less than you? I don’t need that kind of husband. If it were temporary, then I, of course, would help, provide support somehow. But if he lies on the sofa with a newspaper and earns 300 roubles a month, that situation, of course, wouldn’t suit me. (2–41–1, b. 1980) These quotations express traditional scepticism regarding men—the ‘man on the sofa’, for example, is a conventional image used to epitomise masculine uselessness and disengagement from the concerns of the household. At the same time, however, they also highlight the importance of economic independence in an era of insecurity: women are afraid both of dependence, and of acquiring a dependent man. This goes some way to support the view of Ivan (3–15) quoted above that: ‘now everyone needs money, and not love’. The other side of this is that men also appear to be sceptical about the benefits of a fully dependent wife in the present climate. This wariness is well captured in the comments of the following male respondent, who was divorced and lonely, but also poor: at the end of our research he had an income below the subsistence minimum. He had mentioned that a woman was showing an interest in him, and the interviewer asked him what he thought she wanted from him: Money. Money, you think? Of course. But perhaps love? Yeah, right, love [ironically]. I go home with her, and her lock’s broken. Her lock? The lock needed mending, but I didn’t do it. (4–22–4) According to him, poor women were only interested in getting money from a man, while prosperous women ‘don’t want to live with anyone. They prefer to live alone’. Economic dependence, it seems, is attractive to no one in the context of falling living standards and poverty. This means that, regardless of the supposed fashion for trophy housewives among new Russians, women’s role as breadwinners is increasingly recognised to be crucial. As another of our male respondents, an academic whose wife earned marginally more than him, argued: Now the situation is such that it [breadwinning] is the common task of the whole family. One person can’t support [the family]… Well, only in the case of bankers, we’ve got all sorts of people like Berezovski…but that’s


42

an exception. But in principle, I think that in your average family—there are, you know, some very poor families—but even in an average family, it can only be average if everyone works. (1–09–2) This respondent, like most others, believed that the man should be the main breadwinner, but recognised that being the sole breadwinner was the prerogative of a tiny elite of rich men. Even the most traditional of our respondents only tended to think that women should work fewer hours, or, as one such respondent put it, ‘until lunch time’ (3–03–1, b. 1958). In most cases, however, the idea of supporting a woman’s choice not to work even to this degree was little more than fantasy. The respondent just quoted, for instance, had three children—products, he said, of the ‘sins of youth’—whom he neither saw nor supported, thereby no doubt imposing more than part-time work on the mothers concerned. But, more importantly, this would-be protector of women from heavy work named his mother, a working pensioner, as the main breadwinner in his two-person household, a situation his mother, who was in their flat at the time of the interview, vigorously confirmed from the other room: ‘I provide for him, top up his money’ (3–03– 2). In the harsh economic environment of post-Soviet Russia, therefore, women’s work has been transformed from a duty to the state to a necessity for the family. This situation is not without its tensions. For while bread winning may be the seen as a ‘common task of the whole family’, the idea that men should contribute more persists. Women may accept that they have to support themselves in the current environment, but this is often, as was seen above, a source of resentment. Again, therefore, the male breadwinner norm—which inhibits rather than promotes collective approaches to breadwinning—is implicated in making survival at a time of crisis more difficult. One of the reasons why women’s role as breadwinners may cause tension, is that women continue to bear primary responsibility for running the household. Even when the man concerned is economically supported by a woman, he often does not increase his domestic contribution. The respondent just quoted, for example, admitted that his mother bore responsibility ‘for everything’ in the household (3–03–2). This observation is supported by data from the 1998 ISITO household survey presented in Table 2.1, which suggests that even in couples in which the woman works and the man does not, the woman still devotes considerably more time to housework.15 As can be seen, non-working men living with employed partners do on average only about seven hours a week more housework than their male counterparts who work. Nonworking women, meanwhile, do on average twelve more hours than their working counterparts, who themselves already devote on average almost three times as many hours to housework as men in households where both partners work. Women, therefore, tend to do most of the domestic work whatever the breadwinning arrangements of the household. As mentioned above, they also tend to play a major role in caring for children, although a large proportion of pre-school children still attend kindergartens. On top of these duties, women tend to manage the household budget (Clarke, 2002), and, as will be seen in Chapter 6, usually take responsibility for maintaining networks of family and common friends. Women are therefore the leading force in the household, playing a multifaceted role, ranging from nurturing to economic management.


43

Table 2.1 Hours spent on housework in workingage couples (n=1,275 couples) Average weekly hours of housework husband

wife

Both work (n=866)

8.7

23.9

Only husband works (n=245)

8.7

35.9

Only wife works (n=128)

15.4

22.1

Neither work (n=36)

12.8

34.0

9.5

26.3

Mean

The downside of this is that women’s primary role in the household is the corollary of their secondary status in the labour force. Some women give priority to their domestic role, and therefore have less time to devote to work. Others have limited ambitions because their main source of satisfaction lies outside work. But a significant proportion of women are as equally committed to work as men. And the majority of our respondents, even many of those who would prefer to work fewer hours, are keen to maximise their earnings in the current environment. These points are discussed in Chapter 4. The main problem of women’s status as ‘secondary’ workers relates not so much to the reality of women’s commitment to work or otherwise, but rather to social perceptions of this. As is discussed in the next chapter, women’s association with the domestic sphere means that employers have a bias against them, regardless of their actual levels of commitment to work. Every young woman, for example, is considered to be a ‘potential mother’ regardless of her attitude to motherhood. It is therefore not surprising that vertical segregation continues, and that, as reported in the introduction, the wage gap has remained constant, or even widened (Katz, 2001:248), since the Soviet era, with women earning 60–70 per cent of men’s wages. The analysis of this chapter supports the argument developed by Irina Kozina and Elena Zhidkova in the following chapter that women themselves accept that their dual role makes them less attractive as employees. For example, despite the complaints of women cited above about the stupidity and uselessness of men, the same women will often argue that men are more suited to higher-status, better-paid areas of employment. This can clearly be seen in the following quotation from one of our most successful female respondents, a (never-married) single mother, who, by the end of our research was an entrepreneur earning over the average wage for her region. She began by endorsing male advantage in the labour market, but paradoxically went on to argue that women were more adaptable and reliable than men: A man should provide for the material well-being of the family, and the woman should be responsible for the home. You see, everywhere they prefer men at work, and for the most part that’s right—the man should bring money into the home. A woman can also work, but it would be better for it to be part-time… But to work in the way that women work now—that’s not how it should be. Now, you see, in the majority of


44

families it’s women who earn the money. Men are kind of confused after all these reforms and crises. Things get to them more than they do to a woman. She’s more stable in the face of any crisis. I’ve got lots of friends where that’s the situation. (3–51–1) As can be seen, it is this respondent’s view of the proper household division of labour which leads her to believe that men should be given preferential treatment at work. She gives priority to her normative assumptions, despite the fact that they contradict her own observations regarding the ‘confusion’ of men and the capability of women. In this way, women’s conception of their dual role has an impact on what Cecilia Ridgeway (1997) terms their gender status beliefs. Along with men, they accept a gender order in which men are associated with the world of work, women with the domestic sphere. Regardless of their own competence, and that of women around them, they have a tendency to perceive a preference for male employees as natural. And in spite of their own experience of the importance of the household, they implicitly accord it, and the skills which are developed within it, a lower status than the world of work. As will be seen in the next chapter, the taken-for-grantedness of women’s secondary position at work among both men and women is a potent force in ensuring the reproduction of male advantage in the labour market. Women’s role in the household has its compensations, however. As was argued above, men who find themselves unemployed or economically inactive find it very difficult to define a new role for themselves. By contrast, women have an enormous array of tasks with which to occupy themselves, and these in no way challenge their gender identity. They also have an alternative arena in which to gain a sense of efficacy and meaning: their world does not end with the loss of a job. In addition to this, their leading role in the household means that they are at the centre of the networks of exchange in which the household is embedded. Since they manage the household budget, prepare the food, clothe any children, and oversee the creation of domestic comfort, they also control the monetary and non-monetary means of exchange with other households. As will be seen in Chapter 6, these networks can be crucial in sustaining women through times of trouble.16 Their role in the household may therefore help explain why women are ‘more stable in the face of any crisis’.

The post-Soviet generation: continuity or change? As was indicated during the discussion of respondents’ gender ideologies, the views of our younger respondents did not differ significantly from those of our older respondents. The young women strongly adhered to the idea that they should work, and young men were generally content to ‘allow’ this. Both young men and women thought that men should be the main breadwinners, and tended to have traditional ideas with regard to domestic life. Even when they believed in sharing the responsibility for housework, young people tended to have in mind a division of labour in which men were responsible for repairs, changing light bulbs, and the like. In addition, as will be seen in the next


45

chapter, we were surprised by the traditionalism of their views regarding the gender of different jobs. Since we only followed these respondents for a limited period, it is difficult to say how these ideas will be influenced by the reality of adult life. Already, however, some of the young women in the Ul’yanovsk sample were gaining a taste of the disadvantages they faced. The young mothers in particular faced the traditional problems of combining their work and home commitments. As one of them, a young single mother, noted with regard to a well-paid job she had been offered: I liked everything, except at the end he [the employer] said: ‘Miss, do come, you fit the bill, it’s decided.’ Yes, but I forgot that the working day was from 8.00 until 19.00. I thought about it, I’ve got a small child. (2–9–3) Both young men and women noted the harshness of the current labour market, and the fact that, in the words of one young male respondent ‘it’s better not to get sick…lots of people come to work even with flu’ (2–53–3). But as he noted with regard to the commercial organisation where he worked, it was even worse for women: ‘therefore if it’s a married woman, with children, well, that’s it already, she can’t work here’. Young women also noticed this problem with the non-state sector: ‘of course, no one wants to pay maternity leave, here they don’t offer that kind of benefit, no, fat chance, it’s state organisations that do that’ (2–10–3). Perhaps partly for this reason, the only definite change that could be seen among young people was the lack of unanimity regarding the idea that a woman had to get married and have children young. Of course, some young women in particular still believed that a woman had a perilously short shelflife both in terms of her chances of marriage, and her fertility. But the idea that it was better to delay this was gaining ground. A substantial proportion of men and women wanted to establish themselves first, to separate from their parents if possible. Of course, the extent of women’s desire for prolonged independence varied, as did their relationship to work. But the frantic race to get married before leaving university seems to be a thing of the past—although it is perhaps surprising that young men are not keener to start families, since fathers with at least two children are able to avoid military service. In spite of this incentive, by the end of the research the vast majority of our respondents from Ul’yanovsk were neither married nor cohabiting (only eight of the forty-nine remaining in the sample were married, and two were co-habiting). Only seven of them, meanwhile, were parents, and only one of these had more than one child. In terms of declining fertility, our female respondents are clearly part of a wider trend. Fertility declined in the 20–24 age group from 163.9 births per 1,000 women in 1989, to 98.8 in 2002. It also fell, albeit less steeply, in older age groups declining in the 30–34 age group from 54.6 births per 1,000 of population in 1989 to 43.2 in 2002, and in the 35–39 age group from 22 to 14.9 in the same time frame (Goskomstat, 2003:55). This suggests that women are not simply delaying childbirth, but in some cases forgoing it altogether. Thus, although the younger generation appears to adhere to the gender ideology of their parents, it is not clear how far this will influence their behaviour. In an environment


46

in which having a child is viewed as a private choice, managing to combine work, household management and motherhood will be even more difficult than it was in the Soviet past. Exactly how young men and women will resolve this is not clear, though delay is the obvious short-term solution.

Discussion In terms of what our respondents say about the proper roles of men and women, it seems that Soviet norms are being reproduced in post-Soviet Russia. Meanwhile, in broad outline, the position of men and women in employment relative to each other has not changed a great deal since the collapse of communism, despite the enormous upheavals of the period. The vast majority of women work, though they earn less than their male counterparts, and they tend to occupy the lower positions. The gender division of labour in which ‘women do everything and men do the rest’ persists, with women continuing to play the leading role in the household. Women say that what they want from men in the household is ‘help’, while they ‘help’ men with breadwinning. But their assistance with breadwinning usually implies working full-time, while men’s expected contribution to the household is far less time-consuming. This gender division of labour does nothing to foster co-operation between men and women. Rather, it systematically produces men who are uninvolved in the life of the household. The problem is well captured in the following exchange with a thoughtful young teacher, contemplating the sort of family she would like to have. She initially proposed the traditional Soviet model in which she would work and run the household, with a little bit of ‘help’ from her putative husband, but she was prompted by the interviewer to think through the implications of this: Look, it already works out that you’ll have a triple burden: a child, work, and also you’ll have to do the house… I can do it, I’m strong. Good, you’re strong, and you’ll cope with it, but do you think it’s desirable? Perhaps it’s bad too. You need to share things with a man, you need to, I understand. For if a woman takes on everything, she makes a man weak, of course. Not in the literal sense of weak, but she allows him to take it easy. (3–20–1, b. 1976) In this comment, the respondent pinpointed the central problem of the Soviet gender order: it produces women who are forced to become ‘strong’, and men who are encouraged to become ‘weak’ (Ashwin, 2000:18). A situation in which breadwinning in practice is a shared responsibility, but the household is run by women, is unbalanced and likely to lead to conflict. The challenges of transition have only served further to expose and heighten the problems with this model. Any difficulties that men have in the labour market are immediately compounded by their precarious position in the household, while


47

for many women life is a permanent struggle ‘to get everything done’ in which men are likely to be perceived as obstacles rather than partners. Strongly held views regarding the correct gender division of labour also prevent men and women responding flexibly to the challenges of reform. For example, when a woman is better placed to earn money than a man, both would benefit if he were to take on a greater domestic load. However, most of our respondents—men and women alike—were resistant to this idea. One of our respondents, who had successfully established a café at a busy railway station and was earning three times the wage of her husband, did want such an arrangement. As she reported: Now he is working from morning till night, if you talk to him he’ll bring you his wage-slip: 2000. I say: ‘Are you joking or what? If you sat at home with the child I’d have more free time, I could earn those 2000 somewhere or other, rather than you working morning till night’… I am used to someone being at home, overall, I don’t manage to do anything, my home is a complete mess. … I think that 2000, it’s impossible to accept, especially for a man… I’d even say that I am really upset about his work. (4–09–4) The interview provided little insight into why her husband refused to give up his low paid and time-consuming job, but it seems likely that prevailing norms regarding masculinity played a role in his decision. And this is not surprising, for men attempting a role reversal take a risk. In general, our female respondents were not as open-minded as the respondent just quoted, and preferred the locally accepted division of labour. Female breadwinners often felt that their partners’ attempts to play a role in the household only added insult to injury. As one of them put it: ‘Well, you see, when he participates [at home], for me it simply means only tears. It would be better if he didn’t participate’ (1–08–2). Such views were generally, as in this case, justified on the grounds of male incompetence, though they often also appeared motivated by discomfort at the disruption of local norms. As another respondent, who actually couldn’t fault her husband’s domestic skills, put it, ‘for me, it is even somehow unpleasant. I ask him, “What are you doing, preparing to be a housewife or something?”’ (3–43–1). Such entrenched views about the proper roles of men and women only serve to inhibit the development of joint strategies for surviving reform, as a whole series of solutions to household financial difficulties are ruled out in advance, or, at the very least, rendered deeply problematic. ‘Solidarity’ is thus inhibited at the time when it is most needed. The privations of reform serve to heighten the contradictions inherent within the currently accepted gender division of labour, but whether this will lead to its being contested is another matter. With a few exceptions, our respondents tended to uphold the Soviet gender order even in the face of compelling evidence of its dysfunctionality. The power of prevailing norms can be seen clearly in the case of the following young seamstress from Samara. She was living with her parents, and, when she was asked about the domestic division of labour at home, she broke down in tears. It was a standard Russian tragedy:


48

My mum works, goes to the market, washes, cleans up, cooks—all that is up to her. And he comes home, lies on the sofa and watches the television. On top of that he doesn’t let her watch the television: he chooses which channel to watch. Well, is that right? In addition he wears out our nerves with his drinking. (3–14–1, b. 1980) It might be expected that her sense of injustice would prompt reflection on the reasons for her parents’ troubles. But when she was asked what she thought woman’s role should be at home, she endorsed the very division of labour under which her mother was suffering. According to her, a woman should be responsible ‘for cleanliness, for order, for the upbringing of the children all the same. Because the man should provide for the family for the most part. It’s a primitive point of view, but yes’ (3–14–1). How the younger generation who are postponing families will deal with these questions when they face them in reality is hard to gauge, but such views suggest that they will explain any problems they encounter in terms of individual failings. Selfish or ‘stupid’ men will be identified as the problem, rather than the norms that push men to the margins of domestic life. This all-too-common response blocks change and only increases the divisions between men and women. It is therefore not surprising that many of our respondents were sceptical about the possibility of love between men and women in the postSoviet environment. The normative environment in which our respondents were operating was one in which both men and women had strong incentives to be financially independent and hence active in the labour market. Men faced few domestic obstacles in organising their working lives, whereas women were somewhat more constrained. Women, partly as a result of this, were assumed to be secondary workers. That our male respondents ended up earning more than their female counterparts did not come as a surprise. But at the same time, the configuration of gender relations outlined above renders men vulnerable when they face difficulties in the labour market. Many of our male respondents suffered as a result of this, and, as will be seen in the following chapters, they did seem to be more liable to demoralisation than women. In this sense, women’s role within the household— once derided as the source of their oppression—has perhaps been their salvation during the crisis.

Notes 1 The gender order can be defined as the historically constructed pattern of power relations between men and women and definitions of masculinity and femininity in a given society (Cornell, 1987:98–99). 2 For a more detailed exploration of the content and contradictions of the Soviet gender order, see Ashwin (2000). 3 One of the most notorious expressions of this was the comment of the (then) Russian Labour Minister, Gennadi Melikyan, who, when asked in 1993 about measures to combat female unemployment, replied, ‘Why should we employ women when men are out of work? It’s better that men work and women take care of the children and do housework. I don’t think women should work when men are doing nothing’ (quoted in Morvant, 1995:5).


49

4 The use of the term ‘traditional’ is problematic in this context. The male breadwinner/female carer model is not ‘traditional’ in Russia, in the sense of being the dominant prerevolutionary model. On the eve of the Russian Revolution 80 per cent of the Russian population were peasants, and peasant women worked within the context of the peasant household. As one study of Russian peasant women’s work concluded, ‘work, paid and unpaid, was the focal point of existence for peasant women as well as for men’ (Glickman, 1992:69). Moreover, on the eve of the revolution the participation of women in industry was quite high: in 1913, though they were heavily concentrated in textile industry, women constituted a third of the industrial labour force, rising to half during the First World War (Lapidus, 1978:164–165). Male heads of household were considered to have the right to control women, but most men in Tsarist Russia could not afford to keep a non-working wife. 5 For a description of the work involved in living in a ‘private’, wooden house, see Ashwin (1999:40–43). 6 In 1999 only 22 per cent of the Russian population lived in private houses, while 78 per cent lived in flats, communal flats or hostels (Goskomstat, 2000:308). A survey in Syktyvkar found that nearly 95 per cent of private houses did not have modern conveniences (Burawoy et al., 1999:39). 7 The 1998 ISITO household survey found that in over 90 per cent of households women were responsible for tasks such as cooking, cleaning and washing. In over 80 per cent of households they were responsible for shopping, while men were responsible for carrying out repairs in over 90 per cent of households. 8 Calculated by Simon Clarke on the basis of information from Goskomstat Statistichestkii ezhegodniki (statistical yearbooks). 9 Meanwhile, twelve men in our initial sample were divorcees, and, of these, four (3–02, 4–22, 4–25, 4–56) mentioned that the breakdown of their marriages had occurred as a result of their failure to perform as primary breadwinners. It could be that this factor also played a role in the other cases, but since we did not specifically ask about the reasons for marital breakdown that happened before the research began we have no way of knowing. Adding these to the cases of divorce that occurred during our research, we can say that seven out of sixteen cases of divorce among our male respondents were seen by the men concerned as stemming from their failure as main providers. 10 Research in the UK utilising data from the Social Change and Economic Life Initiative (SCELI) has shown that post-marital unemployment increases men’s risk of divorce by 70 per cent. Job insecurity at marriage was also associated with a significantly higher risk of dissolution (Lampard, 1994). Given that the gender norms regarding breadwinning in the UK are considerably more flexible than those in Russia, the increased hazard of divorce during unemployment in Russia may be even higher. 11 In fact, twelve of our married or cohabiting female respondents were the main earners in their households, but three of these cases were excluded from the analysis since two of the relationships were new, while in one case the husband concerned was simply between jobs. In this sense, the respondents concerned did not feel that they had been permanently thrust into the role of main breadwinner. 12 In spite of their poverty they had contemplated adopting an abandoned baby that Natalya had come across in her work at the hospital. Only the fierce objections of their teenage daughter—who made all the obvious points about their financial situation—had prevented them from doing this. 13 For a fuller exposition of this argument, see Ashwin and Lytkina (2004). 14 Bobak et al., using data from the New Russian Barometer, argue that drinking is associated with unemployment among men, but not among women (1999:864). 15 This is in line with research in other countries such as the UK, which suggests that, following unemployment, men’s contribution to housework increases only marginally (Binns and Mars, 1984; Pahl, 1984; Morris, 1988, 1990; Waddington et al., 1998).


50

16 This parallels findings in the UK using SCELI data which suggest that unemployment tends to contract the social networks of those afflicted, with men particularly likely to be confined to networks consisting mainly of other unemployed people (Gallie et al., 1994).

References Akhapkin, Y. (ed.) (1970) First Decrees of Soviet Power, London: Lawrence and Wishart. Ashwin, S. (1999) Russian Workers: The Anatomy of Patience, Manchester: Manchester University Press. ——(2000) ‘Gender, state and society in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia’, in S.Ashwin (ed.) Gender, State and Society in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia, London: Routledge, pp. 1–29. Ashwin, S. and Bowers, E. (1997) ‘Do Russian women want to work?’, in M.Buckley (ed.) PostSoviet Women: From the Baltic to Central Asia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ashwin, S. and Lytkina, T. (2004) ‘Men in crisis in Russia: the role of domestic marginalization’, Gender and Society, 18, 2:189–206. Binns, D. and Mars, G. (1984) ‘Family, community and unemployment: a study in change’, Sociological Review, 32, 1:662–695. Bobak, M., McKee, M., Rose, R. and Marmot, M. (1999) ‘Alcohol consumption in a national sample of the Russian population’, Addiction, 94, 9:857–866. Burawoy, M., Krotov, P. and Lytkina, T. (1999) Ot derevyannogo Parizha k panel’noi Orbite: Model’ zhilishnikh klassov Syktyvkara, Syktyvkar: Institut regional’nykh sotsial’nykh issledovanii Respubliki Komi. Clarke, S. (2002) ‘Budgetary management in Russian households’, Sociology, 36, 3: 539–557. Connell, R. (1987) Gender and Power: Society, the Person and Sexual Politics, Cambridge: Polity Press. Dale, A. and Holdsworth, C. (1998) ‘Why don’t minority ethnic women in Britain work parttime?’, in J.O’Reilly, and C.Fagan (eds), Part-Time Prospects: An International Comparison of Part-Time Work in Europe, North America and the Pacific Rim, London: Routledge, pp. 77–95. Figart, D., Mutari, E. and Power, M. (2002) Living Wages, Equal Wages: Gender and Labour Market Policies in the United States, London: Routledge. Filtzer, D. (1992) Soviet Workers and De-Stalinization: The Formation of the Modern System of Soviet Production Relations, 1953–1964, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Funk, N. (1993) ‘Feminism East and West’, in N.Funk and M.Mueller (eds), Gender Politics and Post-Communism: Reflections from Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union, New York: Routledge, pp. 318–330. Gallie, D., Gershuny, J. and Vogler, C. (1994) ‘Unemployment, the household and social networks’, in D.Gallie, C.Marsh and C.Vogler (eds), Social Change and the Experience of Unemployment, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Glickman, R. (1992) ‘Peasant women and their work’, in B.Farnsworth and L.Viola (eds), Russian Peasant Women, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Goskomstat (2000) Sotsial’noe polozhenie i uroven’ zhizni naseleniya Rossii, Moscow: Goskomstat Rossii. ——(2003) Sotsial’noe polozhenie i uroven’ zhizni naseleniya Rossii, Moscow: Goskomstat Rossii. Gruzdeva, E. (1995) Zhenskaya bezrabotista v Rossii (1991–1994gg.), Moscow: IMEMO RAN. Katz, K. (2001) Gender, Work and Wages in the Soviet Union: A Legacy of Discrimination, Basingstoke: Palgrave. Kiblitskaya, M. (2000a) ‘Russia’s female breadwinners: the changing subjective experience’, in S.Ashwin (ed.), Gender, State and Society in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia, London: Routledge, pp. 55–70.


51

——(2000b) ‘Once we were kings: male experiences of loss of status at work in post-communist Russia’, in S.Ashwin (ed.), Gender, State and Society in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia, London: Routledge, pp. 90–104. Kozina, I. (2000) ‘Chto opredelyaet status “kormil’tsa” sem’i?’, Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya, 11:83–89. Kukhterin, S. (2000) ‘Fathers and patriarchs in communist and post-communist Russia’, in S.Ashwin (ed.), Gender, State and Society in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia, London: Routledge, pp. 71–89. Lampard, R. (1994) ‘An examination of the relationship between marital dissolution and unemployment’, in D.Gallie, C.Marsh and C.Vogler (eds.), Social Change and the Experience of Unemployment, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lapidus G. (1978) Women in Soviet Society: Equality, Development and Social Change, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Lissyutkina, L. (1993) ‘Soviet women at the crossroads of perestroika’, in N.Funk and M.Mueller (eds) Gender Politics and Post-Communism: Reflections from Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union, New York: Routledge, pp. 274–286. Moore, H. (1994) A Passion for Difference: Essays in Anthropology and Gender, Cambridge: Polity Press. Morris, L. (1988) ‘Employment, the household and social networks’, in D.Gallie (ed.), Employment in Britain, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. ——(1990) The Workings of the Household: A US–UK Comparison, Cambridge: Polity Press. Morvant, P. (1995) ‘Bearing the double burden in Russia’, Transition, 1, 16:4–9. Pahl, R. (1984) Divisions of Labour, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Pfau-Effinger, B. (1998) ‘Culture or structure as explanations for differences in parttime work in Germany, Finland and the Netherlands?’, in J.O’Reilly, and C. Fagan (eds), Part-Time Prospects: An International Comparison of Part-Time Work in Europe, North America and the Pacific Rim, London: Routledge, pp. 177–198. ——(1999) ‘The modernisation of family and motherhood in Western Europe’, in R. Crompton (ed.), Restructuring Gender Relations and Employment: The Decline of the Male Breadwinner, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 60–80. Ridgeway, C. (1997) ‘Interaction and the conservation of gender inequality: considering employment’, American Sociological Review, 62:218–235. Thompson, L. and Walker, A. (1989) ‘Gender in families: women and men in marriage, work and parenthood’, Journal of Marriage and the Family, 51:845–871. Waddington, D., Chritcher, C. and Dicks, B. (1998) ‘“All jumbled up”: employed women with unemployed husbands’, in J.Popay, J.Hearn and J.Edwards (eds), Men, Gender Divisions and Welfare, London: Routledge. West, C. and Zimmerman, D. (1987) ‘Doing gender’, Gender and Society, 1:125–151. Zdravomyslova, E. (1996) ‘Problems of becoming a housewife’, in E.Haavio-Mannila and A.Rotkirch (eds), Women’s Voices in Russia Today, Aldershot: Dartmouth.

3 Sex segregation and discrimination in the new Russian labour market Irina Kozina and Elena Zhidkova

In responding to the challenges thrown up by economic reform, our respondents faced a labour market deeply segregated by sex. This segregation takes place on various levels. In the first instance, the state proscribes the employment of women in particular kinds of work. The impact of this, however, is negligible in comparison to the self-sorting of employees into ‘gender-appropriate’ work, and the strong reinforcement of this through the preferences of employers for a particular gender division of labour. The gender of our respondents thus constitutes a constraint on their choices in the labour market, which is both internalised and externally enforced. This chapter examines the nature of the social conventions and beliefs which shape the pattern of gender segmentation of the Russian labour market. It also explores the degree to which discrimination affected the employment prospects of our respondents. Employers perceive every job to have a ‘gender profile’, but direct discrimination is less common than might be anticipated because employees generally sort themselves into gender-appropriate professions. At the same time, however, the Russian economy is in flux, which means that the gender profile of certain professions is changing. Men have the advantage in this process, because of the widespread assumption that they make superior employees. As was noted in previous chapters, women have managed to maintain their presence in the labour force in spite of the bias against them—they have not formed the majority of the unemployed during transition and female employment continues to be seen as normal. Nonetheless, men tend to be the employees of choice for the betterpaid and higher-status forms of work, and given the weakness of regulation during the transition era, there is little to prevent employers acting on such preferences. This chapter examines this process on the basis of an analysis of our coding and the trajectories of our respondents. In addition, we have used data from Valery Yakubovich’s survey of hires, which is introduced below. Soviet women were expected to work. Although the Soviet labour force was marked by both horizontal and vertical segregation by sex (McAuley, 1981; Filtzer, 1992:177– 203; Katz, 2001:97–101), women were also encouraged by the state to break down some forms of such segregation by moving into areas of scientific, industrial and agricultural employment which had little relation to conventional conceptions of femininity. Female tractor drivers, for example, were notoriously celebrated. At the same time, however, the state always assumed that women were different kind of workers from men, marked out by their biological capacity to be mothers. This assumption found its strongest expression in the banning of women from certain professions on the grounds that participation in these might impair their ability to produce healthy children (Attwood, 1999:90). More generally, the definition of Soviet women as ‘worker-mothers’, who were also expected

Sex segregation and discrimination in the new Russian labour market

53

to bear primary responsibility for running the household, meant that women tended to be seen as second-class workers (Ashwin, 2000). What we see in the transition era is that part of the Soviet legacy with regard to women’s employment has been preserved, and part of it has been eroded. As shown in the previous chapter, the idea that women should work is deeply ingrained and largely unquestioned in post-Soviet society. But, as will be seen below, the idea that women are ‘special’ workers with different capabilities from men stemming from their distinct biological role also remains strong. What has proved to have shallow roots is the idea that women can conquer spheres of employment associated with conventional masculine stereotypes. As will be seen, all our respondents, regardless of age or sex, are united in a highly traditional conception of gender-appropriate work. This perhaps speaks of the importance of the longue durée in the development of social conventions. The idea that women should work did not go against the grain of what, on the eve of the Revolution, was a largely peasant society. At the same time, however, assumptions regarding ‘natural’ sexual difference implying different social roles for men and women were not challenged by the Communist elite (Ashwin, 2000:11–12). Therefore, although the notion that women could work in a whole range of ‘masculine’ professions was given pragmatic support by the regime, this sat uneasily with the idea of different biological destinies which was also endorsed by the state and had deeper roots. As we will see below, with the passing of the Soviet state, deeply ingrained beliefs regarding biological difference have now acquired a new power and legitimacy. These ideas were present in the Soviet era at the level of popular discourse (see, for example, Hansson and Liden, 1987), but official state policy nonetheless encouraged women to ‘storm’ masculine fortresses, and employers were constrained in the expression of their preferences for male and female employees by strong state regulation and a tight labour market. Now employers are operating in a period of high unemployment and lax regulation and are free to express their previously concealed preferences. Meanwhile, in contrast to the Soviet era, employers and employees seldom encounter material in the mass media which would challenge their conceptions of gender-appropriate employment. The chapter begins by briefly outlining the regulatory framework. It then looks at a more potent constraint on the behaviour of employers and employees—local norms concerning what constitutes ‘gender appropriate’ work. We then present the findings from our data concerning sex discrimination during hiring. We argue that prejudices against women as employees are deeply ingrained, and do influence the hiring decisions of employers. Finally, we use the evidence from our study to examine the process of regendering of jobs during transition. We argue that the gender restructuring of employment is being guided by assumptions regarding gender difference which favour men, and that consequently women’s choice of work is becoming increasingly circumscribed.

The regulatory environment The weak regulation of employment relations has been a striking feature of the transition era. With regard to sex discrimination, the laxity in regulation is partly an issue of enforcement, although the legal framework is inadequate and itself sanctions some forms


54

of discrimination against women. On the one hand, discrimination in employment is outlawed. On the other, as will be shown below, women are still ‘protected’ in ways which mean that the labour market is effectively divided by the state into ‘gender-neutral’ and ‘male’ professions. The other problem is that those parts of the law outlawing discrimination have a general, declarative character, and no effort is made to enforce them. Discrimination in employment was forbidden by the declaration in Article 5 of the 1991 Law ‘On the Employment of the Population of the Russian Federation’ which guaranteed citizens a free choice of employment ‘irrespective of sex and age’. Article three of the 2001 Labour Code (adopted after our fieldwork had been completed) also prohibits discrimination in employment. Russia has also inherited the ILO conventions signed by the Soviet Union including Conventions 100 (on equal pay for men and women), 111 (on discrimination) and 122 (on employment policy). In addition, the Russian government ratified Convention 156 (on workers with family responsibilities) in 1997. In terms of special protection, the Soviet Labour Code notoriously contained a long list of rights and privileges for women, which were to be paid for by employers. This was still in force at the time our fieldwork was conducted. The new Labour Code adopted by the Duma in December 20011 was designed to liberalise labour regulation, and this included a relaxation in the rules governing women’s employment. A comparison of the two codes with regard to women’s employment reveals a number of differences. First, the Soviet Labour Code prohibited women’s employment in heavy work, work with harmful and/or dangerous working conditions, and underground work, with the exception of non-physical or work connected with sanitary or general servicing (Article 130). The new code does not prohibit, but simply limits women’s work in the areas mentioned, and obliges the government to draw up a list of those industries, professions, jobs and forms of work with harmful or dangerous working conditions where the use of female labour should be limited. At the time of writing, in the absence of the new list, workplaces are still relying on the old Soviet list of harmful and dangerous forms of work. This list contains more than 500 forms of work in various industries in which women’s work is forbidden (with the exception of some managerial and technical posts). In line with the provisions of the old code, the new Labour Code prohibits women from lifting and moving weights exceeding norms laid down by Decree 105 of the Council of Ministers, 1993 (Article 235 of the new Labour Code). The Soviet Labour Code prohibited women from working at night. As is well known, women continued to work at night, but this was presented as a temporary measure in branches where such work was considered ‘essential’. This widely ignored prohibition has been dropped from the new Code, and is retained only for pregnant women. Pregnant women are also, as in the past, not to be sent on business trips, required to do overtime or work at weekends or holidays (article 259 of the new code). A number of privileges for women with children under 3 years old have been removed, however. Previously these women were also prohibited from carrying out night work, overtime, and so on. All such restrictions have now been abolished. In terms of maternity rights, the new Code has not changed the provision for 1.5 years’ maternity leave, the paid portion of which is funded by the state. At the same time, however, the legal protections of pregnant women and mothers have been weakened.


55

According to Article 255 of the new Labour Code, working mothers have a right to paid maternity leave of 70 days before the birth, and 70 days afterwards (with additions to this in the case of multiple or difficult births).2 In accordance with Article 8 of the 1995 law ‘On State Benefits to Citizens with Children’, benefits are paid at the level of the woman’s average pay (up to a maximum currently set at 11,700 roubles a month). But the new code has dropped the provision of the Soviet code (in part one of Article 170) prohibiting employers from refusing to hire pregnant women or mothers. Now this only exists in the form of general guarantees for all citizens regarding the conclusion of labour contracts (part 3 of Article 64 of the new code). As in the past, it is illegal to sack a pregnant woman with a permanent contract (except in the case of the liquidation of the organisation), while the employer of a woman whose temporary contract expires while she is pregnant is obliged on the request of the woman to grant a prolongation of her contract until the moment she qualifies for maternity leave. The latter constitutes a weakening of part 2 of Article 170 of the Soviet code which obliged the employer to hire the woman concerned on a permanent basis. Women are thus still singled out as ‘special’ workers, but the level of their protection has been somewhat reduced. In some cases, such as the removal on the prohibition of night work, this may serve to render women more attractive to employers. But other changes, such as the reduction of employment protection for pregnant women, are likely to make women more vulnerable to discrimination. Such differences, however, pale into insignificance alongside the fact that discrimination, while illegal, is tolerated by both state and citizens. Virtually no effort is made to punish or prevent it—as will be seen below, for example, employers feel free to specify the sex they require in job adverts with no fear of sanction. The introduction of the new Labour Code has not so far led to tighter enforcement, so we expect our findings to remain relevant for the foreseeable future. Overall, women can be said to be more vulnerable to discrimination than they were in the Soviet era. In the Soviet era, labour law was only selectively enforced (Shelley, 1984; Hendley, 1996), but at the same time the Party, trade unions, and enterprise yuriskonsul’ty (lawyers) were capable of constraining and disciplining managers whose behaviour was causing complaint among workers (Ashwin, 2003). This they often did in the interests of social cohesion in a system in which the Party claimed to rule on behalf of the working class. Discrimination certainly existed during the Soviet era, but the fact that the Party claimed to have instituted equality between the sexes constituted a brake on discriminatory practices—victims of discrimination could always complain to the Party. In the transition era, the chances of redress are much smaller. With the demise of the Communist Party as a state institution, the regulatory capacity of the state has been dramatically reduced, and along with it, paradoxically, the capacity of employees to control the behaviour of employers (Ilyin and Ilyina, 1996:378–379). Meanwhile, the issue of discrimination is not a high priority for the unions, which, in any case, are very weak. Thus, employers, who already have the upper hand in the labour market due to high unemployment, face few constraints in exercising their preferences for particular types of employee. In such an environment, gender stereotypes and prejudices become particularly salient.


56

Conceptions of gender-appropriate work So what are the predominant gender stereotypes guiding the behaviour of actors in the contemporary Russian labour market? The following section explores this question, looking at the views of both employees and employers. Both have strong ideas regarding the suitability of different sorts of work for men and women. There is a high level of consensus between the sexes and across generations on this question, indicating that gender segmentation of the labour market is a taken-for-granted facet of life which informs the behaviour of all actors in the labour market. The views of employees Most of our respondents see the labour market as segmented on the basis of sex, and perceive this to be a ‘natural’ phenomenon resulting from biological differences. Men and women are perceived to have different biological roles and capabilities that form the basis of a division of labour in which women bear primary responsibility for domestic work, and men for breadwinning. In line with this, ‘female’ professions are often seen as a continuation of the sort of work that women do in the household. Meanwhile in accordance with the male breadwinner norm, the more prestigious, better-paid jobs tend to be seen as ‘male’, while lower-status, lower-paid jobs tend to be seen as ‘female’ regardless of the nature of the work involved.3 Any discussion of ‘male’ and ‘female’ professions tends to begin with a definition of male jobs ‘which a woman can’t manage to do’. Such reflections refer to physiological differences between men and women, and the superior physical strength of men. Loading and mining are key examples of professions from which our respondents thought that women should be excluded on grounds of physical strength. As shown in Table 3.1, these were among the professions most frequently mentioned as ‘male’. The forms of physical labour seen as classically feminine by our respondents were those connected with domesticity: cleaning, child-care and dish-washing. The differences between men and women are seen to extend beyond physical strength, however. Our respondents commonly thought that men were also more intelligent and talented than women, with greater potential for leadership. This view was no more common among men than among women, and was found as frequently among the young as the old, as can be seen in the following quotations, the first three of which are drawn from our group of young specialists from Ul’yanovsk: No, any management function, it’s male. That’s what I think. Because in the majority of cases it’s specifically men who have the strength, are more decisive, have that feeling of superiority; a feeling of leadership is in men’s blood. (2–38–4m)


57

I simply think, it seems to me, that men are simply in fact a lot more talented than women by nature… You can see that their brains are built differently, somehow their reasoning [is different], I’m convinced of it. (2–39–4m) Graduate work is of course difficult because you are constantly competing with men. Men are all the same more intelligent. Why? Basically it’s decided by nature. They are lazier, they are cleverer, as a rule, they are more capable. And looking at science in general would you say it’s more a male sphere? Looking at science in general, then I’d say yes. (2–59–4f) You can’t escape the effects of nature. I mean heavy work. Also, of course, their mental capabilities are much greater. I don’t know why. There are, of course, exceptions—clever women—but generally men are more intelligent. (3–33–1f)

Table 3.1 Views of our respondents on the gender of professions (number of respondents mentioning the profession in brackets) ‘Male’ Professions

‘Female’ Professions

Gender-neutral Professions

Driver (14)

Accountant (16)

Academic (12)

Loader (11)

Teacher (16)

Teacher (6)

Miner (10)

Kindergarten teacher (12)

Doctor (4)

Boss (8)

Secretary (11)

Accountant (2)

Fitter (7)

Nurse (5)

Engineer

Security guard (5)

Shop assistant (5)

Manager

Builder (5)

Doctor (4)

Lawyer

Surgeon (5)

Shop assistant (4)

Musician

Entrepreneur (4)

Cleaner (4)

Photographer

Programmer (4)

Hairdresser (3)

Steel-worker (4)

Cook (3)

Welder (4)

Seamstress (3)

Investigator (4)

Librarian (2)

Carpenter (3)

Dish-washer (2)


Plumber (3)

Beautician (2)

Lathe operator (3)

Nanny (2)

Brick-layer (3)

Computer operator (2)

Pilot (2)

Care worker (2)

Mathematician (2)

Pharmaceutical chemist

Police officer (2)

Tram driver

Joiner (2)

Controller

Academic (2)

Clerk

Seaman (2)

Storekeeper

Fisherman

Conductor

Heavy worker

Confectioner

Bulldozer operator

Dressmaker

Diver

Waitress

Soldier

Physician

Dentist

Academic

58

Janitor Engineer Captain Lumberjack Manager Marketer Politician President Radio operator Rescue worker Excavator operator Electrician

Given that men are seen as more capable and stronger than women, it is not surprising that they are seen as universal workers, whereas women are generally seen as workers with innate limitations. As one of our young male respondents put it: A man can do everything. Everything, practically. The only thing he can’t do is give birth. In principle he can do anything he likes. The only thing is that the way in which men are brought up sets up a few limits, taboos. For


59

example, as far as I know, no man is going to go and clean the floor or wash dishes. It’s probable that they are brought up differently. But physically they can do everything. (2–12–1m) As this respondent hints, the only limits on men are perceived as social, and linked to their higher status. In line with this, there is a series of professions which our respondents think are beneath the dignity of men. These are all professions which appear in the list of ‘female’ professions in Table 3.1. Men would risk their status by carrying out such work, although it is seen as perfectly congruent with the status and role of women: Only a woman can be a secretary/personal assistant. I think that for a man it is humiliating. (2–56–1f) Well, for me, the army, for example, is only for men. There is, of course, work [in the army] with computers or paperwork, that is work which a woman can do… If you take civilian professions, well, for example, a dishwasher, of course, a man can wash dishes too, but why not let a woman do it? And why not let a man do it? But a man will find something more worthwhile. Can’t a woman find something more worthwhile? Well someone’s got to work as a dishwasher, and it’s better to let a woman do it. (3–38–1m) What sort of man would agree to clean floors? Although some things are changing and now you can come across men working as shop assistants, and conductors. But they haven’t sunk so low as to be hospital orderlies. A man may clean the floor at home, although not all of them will even do that. But at work—they couldn’t do that sort of work, they’d lose their self-respect. (4–13–4f) Men’s self-respect is therefore seen as a limiting factor in their choice of work, but this excludes them only from the most unattractive jobs. Another facet of this status hierarchy is evident in the perceived gender profile of routine work. Women are seen as responsible, careful and attentive to detail and therefore suitable for the kind of routine work which is seen to destroy a man’s creativity. Men are portrayed as risk-takers and innovators who are wasted in the kinds of professions to which women are said to be suited: Simply any man, yes, that kind of monotonous work—I also had to do the report on accounts, as a manager I need have a grasp on it—well, that kind of routine work will simply send a man mad. He can’t, he constantly


60

needs something new, we need something new: something to explain, research, to try something out. And there—it’s all the same thing… But if you take women they actually can be accountants, economists, you see, exactly in those sections because there the work is more monotonous, and there you don’t need any innovation, you’ve just got to follow the legislation and that’s it. There you don’t need to act, look for something, search, but try to do everything according to old methods. (2–28–1m) Take a librarian for instance. That’s purely women’s work. A man simply won’t sit all day and give out books. A man’s got to have some kind of goal in life, he’s got to grow. It’s not interesting for them to do work like that. (3–52–1f) Our women…they don’t need a meaning in life, they’ve already got it, understand? Stemming from that, they can adjust to all situations, but men can’t [survive] without ideas. They need some kind of idea to get him [sic] moving. Now there are no ideas. Therefore they hang around and drink. (3–47–1m) In the final quotation, the way in which biological differences are ascribed a social meaning is evident. Women have a goal in life—motherhood—and they can therefore put up with any kind of work. Men, however, derive their main meaning from work, and without ideas, without a goal, they go mad or are driven to drink. This perspective is actually not a million miles away from the views of sociologists regarding the problems that men face when their status in the labour market is threatened—the idea being that men lack other roles to compensate.4 The rhetorical intent and understanding behind the two positions differ, however. In the case of the respondents quoted above, the association of men with the world of work, and their concomitant alienation from the domestic sphere, are not problematised, but are taken as a given which is used to justify men’s privileged access to better kinds of work. This highlights the way in which what Cecilia Ridgeway (1997) labels gender status beliefs influence the sex-typing of jobs in Russia. Women’s status as workers in Soviet Russia was always implicitly nested within their prior identities as workers and household managers. Their consequent secondary position in the world of work is still taken-for-granted by both men and women. In line with this, men’s role as breadwinners is another line of argument used to justify the definition of better-paid work as ‘male’. This argument is particularly strongly expressed among our young respondents. They are slightly more flexible in their conceptions of the sort of work men can do, especially in the service sector, which was extremely low status in the Soviet era. Now service work in the retail and catering sector is not seen as inherently emasculating, but low pay is still seen to challenge a man’s position:


61

In principle it [teaching] is done by everyone, both men and women, but it seems to me that all the same, it’s more suitable for a woman. Now it’s not the kind of sphere where you can earn a good living. A man, it seems to me, has a family to support. (2–46–4f) At Elki Polki [a restaurant] they pay us 50 roubles [for providing music for an evening]. Well, what’s 50 roubles in return for a whole evening strumming, entertaining? Well, it’s not at all pleasant. Look and you only get 50 roubles for it. For a man that’s absolutely nothing. (2–41–4f) Both these respondents imply that low pay—while not attractive for anyone—is somehow admissible when paid to women. Low pay for men, by contrast, is seen as selfevidently unacceptable. These ideas find clear expression in the jobs which our respondents identified as ‘male’ and ‘female’. We asked our respondents whether they thought there were such things as ‘male’ and ‘female’ professions and those who responded positively were asked to provide examples. The vast majority of our respondents did think that professions had a gender profile, and very few professions were identified as gender-neutral. Table 3.1 summarises the answers of our respondents, with the number of times a particular profession was mentioned indicated in parentheses. There were no discrepancies in the views of men and women regarding the gender of professions (see Kozina, 2002, where the lists generated by the men and women in our Samara sample are compared). As can be seen, these lists are highly congruent with our respondents’ gender stereotypes. Many of the commonly mentioned ‘male’ professions are those involving physical strength, while machinery, risk and responsibility are other things which are associated with masculinity. Another key feature defining ‘male’ work is status, though this has different components. Bosses are seen as male, but so are drivers. Driving is a high status profession in Russia, though, aside from the autonomy it provides, it is hard to see why this is the case, other than that it is a job generally done by men.5 Meanwhile, women are generally associated with administrative, caring, service and routine work. Interestingly, the most commonly mentioned female jobs are white-collar, in contrast to the preponderance of blue-collar jobs on the male list. This may reflect the fact that in the Soviet era not only did skilled male workers tend to be better paid than white-collar workers, but there was also a social cachet attached to their ‘real’ work, while administrative workers risked being derided as parasites. At the same time, the jobs listed as female are generally subordinate rather than leading positions. For example, while in the West accountancy is a high-status profession, in Soviet Russia it consisted of simple book-keeping and was very much a female profession. This is changing slowly, as is evidenced by the fact that the profession is still seen as ‘female’. Overall, these lists reveal that employees not only have a very clear conception of what constitutes ‘gender-appropriate’ work, but that there is a high degree of consensus on the sort of work which ‘belongs’ to each sex. As outlined above, various criteria are used in the labelling of jobs as male and female, but one principle remains constant: ‘women’s’ jobs are in some sense secondary.


62

The role of employers Since employers inhabit the same society as employees, it is to be expected that they will share the same ideas regarding the gender profile of jobs. Our data does not provide us with direct access to the views of employers, but evidence from Valery Yakubovich’s survey of hires fully confirms this view. Yakubovich carried out a large-scale survey of hires in Samara in 1999. The survey involved a two-stage stratified clustered probability sample of 1,143 hires in 93 organizations, in which all branches of the economy except state administration and finance were represented. Detailed information about hiring practices was accumulated using structured interviews with personnel officers of the organizations sampled, workers who were hired and with the people who made the hiring decisions. Yakubovich’s data shows that employers generally have a strong sense of the ‘gender’ of any given job, and that this preference exerts a powerful influence on who is hired. Employers in the survey defined 36.9 per cent of jobs in the sample as ‘male’, 13.3 per cent as ‘female’, and 49.8 per cent as ‘gender-neutral’. Their designation of the gender of jobs corresponds almost perfectly to that of our respondents shown in Table 3.1. The employers’ list, which comprises nearly 500 professions, is too long to reproduce here, but a few illustrations serve to make the point. Given the nature of the survey, the list is composed of the jobs for which employers were hiring, so the frequency with which a job occurs does not reflect the strength of the stereotype so much as the nature of local demand. Nonetheless, the correspondence between the gender of ‘commonly mentioned’ professions of our respondents with the ‘commonly in demand’ professions generated by the survey of hires is striking. The most frequently occurring ‘male’ job in the employers’ list was that of ‘driver’, while various kinds of fitters and welders also featured strongly in the list of jobs defined by employers as ‘male’. Meanwhile, cleaner, conductor and shop assistant were the most common ‘female’ jobs in the employers’ list, although cleaner and conductor were also among the positions most often mentioned on the ‘gender-neutral’ list. The fact that nearly half the jobs in the sample were defined as ‘gender-neutral’ stands in contrast to the short list of such professions generated by our respondents. But the greater flexibility apparently evinced by employers regarding the gender profile of jobs in their gift may merely conceal their preference for male workers. In practice, 99.1 per cent of jobs defined by employers as ‘female’ and 70.5 per cent of jobs defined as ‘genderneutral’ were filled by women, while 96.1 per cent of ‘male’ jobs were filled by men. There are two possible explanations for this. One is that women successfully outperformed men in the competition for ‘gender-neutral’ jobs. The other is that few men bothered to compete for these jobs because they were seen as ‘female’ or undesirable in some other way. Examination of the pay of the jobs defined as ‘female’ and ‘gender neutral’, on the one hand, and ‘male’, on the other, suggests the latter provides a better explanation. The jobs defined as being ‘male’ paid on average 40 per cent better than the jobs defined as ‘female’ or ‘gender-neutral’. The fact that the pay of the gender-neutral and ‘female’ jobs was similar suggests that the former were jobs for which employers would be happy to hire men, but were realistic in accepting that they might have to take women. This view is given further support by a comparison of the mean monthly wages of the ‘gender-neutral’ professions taken by men and women. In accordance with our expectations, the ‘gender-neutral’ jobs filled by men paid on average over 20 per cent


63

better than those filled by women. Overall, therefore, our analysis of Yakubovich’s survey data suggests that employers are operating according to a hierarchy of worth which closely matches that of employees. Men are the employees of choice for the bestpaid positions, while the high proportion of lower-paid jobs defined as ‘gender-neutral’ suggests that employers may prefer men for these positions too, but have to be prepared to accept women in order to fill the posts. The overlap between the ‘gender-neutral’ and ‘female’ list of jobs generated by the hire survey could be interpreted in the same way. What is also clear is that in the current climate, employers feel free to exercise their preferences over the sex of their employees, without fear of sanction. It is notable that employers had no compunction about revealing their preferences to the researchers conducting Yakubovich’s survey. Even more striking, however, is their preparedness to state these in public when advertising for positions. For example, from the content analysis of employment advertisements published in Samara newspapers in June and December 1998, Sergei Alasheev (1998) found that 18.6 per cent of the advertisements published in June and 23.8 per cent in December contained an explicit gender requirement. By comparison, only 9.4 per cent of advertisements in June and 9.2 per cent in December contained any explicit reference to a potential candidate’s qualifications. Other researchers have also noted that open discrimination in job advertisements is commonplace in contemporary Russia (Bridger et al., 1996:80–81; Sperling, 1999:157). Since the preferences of most employers will be influenced by prevailing gender stereotypes that accord women a secondary status, it can be assumed that the weak regulatory framework generally works to women’s detriment.

The structuring of a gender-segregated labour market The views of our respondents actually correspond quite closely with the actual distribution of men and women in professions (see Table 3.2 for the branch distribution, which gives a good indication of the types of jobs held by men and women). This may suggest that our respondents were simply describing reality when they designated the gender of professions. But this is belied by the normative language in which they couched their views. Rather, it highlights the dynamic relation between norms and reality. The choices of employers and employees are shaped by a common normative framework. The results of their choices in turn become a taken-for-granted feature of the social landscape (‘women are nurses, men are miners’, for example), and over time acquire a normative force of their own (‘it is normal for women to be nurses and men to be miners’).


64

Table 3.2 Percentage of women among the employed by branch Branch

1985

1990

1995

1997

1999

2001

2002

Industry

48

40

40

39

38

38

38

Agriculture

41

39

34

32

34

37

37

Forestry

19

18

20

20

21

21

22

Construction

28

27

23

24

24

24

23

Transport

25

25

26

26

26

26

26

Communications

71

71

67

62

60

62

61

Trade, catering

79

80

64

62

62

62

62

Services

54

52

44

46

46

47

48

Health care, sport

84

83

82

81

81

81

81

Education

80

79

81

81

80

80

81

Art and Culture

71

71

69

69

69

69

70

Science and research

52

53

51

51

51

50

50

Banking, finance, insurance

89

90

75

72

71

71

72

Public administration

71

67

60

50

45

44

44

Total

52

51

48

47

48

48

49

Adapted from Goskomstat (2003) Rossiiskii statisticheskii ezhegodnik, 2003, p. 137

Norms and habits surrounding the gender of jobs thus constitute a major constraint on labour market behaviour. The choices of our respondents have to be understood in this light: a whole range of jobs will simply not be considered by men and women because of their perceived gender inappropriateness. This does not occur simply as a result of employers’ preferences—employees, both male and female, play a crucial role in perpetuating the gender segregation of the labour market. But women, though they themselves participate in the reproduction of gender segregation, also suffer from it since the positions in which they dominate tend to be lower paid.

Statistical discrimination during transition The above has demonstrated that there are strong social sorting mechanisms which push men and women into different areas of work. But this does not mean that men and women never compete for the same positions. Who is given preference when a post is considered ‘gender-neutral’ or when men and women apply for positions generally seen as appropriate for the opposite sex? We argued above that evidence from Yakubovich’s survey suggests men are the employees of choice where the pay is high enough to attract


65

them. Our data from the employee side supports this contention. As will be shown below, it reveals that women are widely perceived to face discrimination in the labour market, that such discrimination occurs, and that ideas regarding women’s disadvantages as employees are deeply ingrained and widely shared. We cannot provide evidence regarding the extent of discrimination, but unless employers are substantially more enlightened than employees—which seems unlikely—we would predict that in most cases, where men are available and prepared to do a particular job for the wage on offer, they will, ceteris paribus, be given preference over women. Our respondents are firmly convinced that men are more attractive to employers than women. This can be seen clearly in the responses of our unemployed Samara sample to the question ‘Who do you think finds it easier to get work, men or women?’ The overwhelming majority of our unemployed female respondents thought that their sex was a disadvantage when looking for work, while a smaller majority of the unemployed men thought that their sex was an advantage. The most common explanation given by both men and women for the perceived male advantage in the labour market was men’s freedom from domestic responsibilities which was said to facilitate greater commitment on the part of male employees. The other commonly cited argument was that men made more versatile employees since they could be relied upon to carry out heavy work such as loading. That is, both men and women assume that employers engage in statistical discrimination (Becker, 1971) on two grounds: that women are more likely to be burdened with domestic responsibilities and childcare, and that their physical attributes place limits on their flexible deployment. In the Soviet era, in the words of one of our respondents, ‘it was possible simultaneously to study, work, get pregnant and give birth’ (3–16–1). Now, although the legal right to do this still exists, cost-conscious employers are far more wary of supporting such practices. Many of our respondents claimed that in the present period employees were required ‘not to get ill, and not to give birth’ in order to keep their jobs. Thus, young women are at risk of statistical discrimination on the grounds that they might require maternity leave at some point, while women who already have children face such discrimination on the grounds that they may often be absent from work. Those who become pregnant, meanwhile, can face instant dismissal. This is more likely in the new private sector than in the former state and budget sectors, which tend to respect the Labour Code more closely. In our data we found examples of both statistical discrimination, and dismissal on grounds of pregnancy: Your sex is a factor, and, even when I was in the process of finding work, I filled in a form about work, they very often said ‘Sorry, but you are a young lady, if you were a man, we would have taken you.’ That happened on more than one occasion. I had a chance to get a job at the UVD [Directorate of Internal Affairs], but they didn’t take women. You see, there was a chance, and I went for training in the tax police. But there, of course, they laid down very tough conditions, well…the demands were very high. In the end it came down to the fact that they didn’t need a woman, because, first, you’ve got to take into account that it’s a lawenforcing military structure, and, secondly, they had a woman programmer, and she went on maternity leave. What do they get out of


66

her, she’s gone now, and three years later [after maternity leave], she’ll have already lost the thread, that is, they’ll have to train her again. So, you see, they refused to take me. (2–58–1) They sacked me from Karlson as soon as they saw that I was pregnant. I worked there as a baker-confectioner. When they took me on they immediately warned me that getting pregnant or having a child would result in immediate dismissal. And, see, they sacked me. And afterwards, where would I find work in that condition? I looked, but I didn’t find anything. (Wife of respondent 4–34–3) More generally, our respondents felt that having children was a disadvantage in the labour market—for women, though not for men. As one respondent explained when asked which sex found it easier to get work: I think that it’s probably easier for men. Well, they are always asking women whether they’ve got children. Then if they’ve got children, it means that they are going to go on the sick. That means again that there’s work to be done but no one to do it. And they look at older women in the same way. Wherever you go, you’re going to be off sick. And the way men are, even if they’re ill they don’t go to the doctor. Well, of course, there are those who like to go [to the doctor], but for the most part they don’t really go off sick. The family doesn’t hamper them. They’re not going to go on the sick [with the children]. If a child is ill then usually it’s the mother who goes on the sick. (4–47–2f) Both mothers and fathers have the right to take sick leave in order to look after an ill child, but as this respondent indicates it is mainly mothers who take up this right. And certainly, employers assume that mothers will do this: they do not ask prospective male employees whether or not they have children. Although our data do not allow us to estimate the extent of statistical discrimination against women on grounds of their role in the family, other evidence suggests that it is quite widespread. A survey of employers carried out by TsIRT (the Centre for Labour Market Research of the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Science) reported by Ovcharova and Prokof’eva (2002), for example, strongly supports this contention. The survey showed that more than half of the employers questioned considered that women’s domestic responsibilities reduced their value as employees because of: frequent absences from work (60 per cent); low productivity (22 per cent), and ‘lack of interest in work’ (12 per cent). Some 2 per cent, echoing our respondents above, also cited women’s ‘low intellectual level’ as reducing their value (ibid.: 59). Our respondents also felt that the greater flexibility of men gave them an advantage. In the transition era, large industrial enterprises have been forced dramatically to reduce their staff, and this means that those who remain are forced to become what are known as


67

‘universal soldiers’—workers capable of performing a variety of tasks. Given their physical characteristics, men are assumed to be more suited to an environment in which such functional flexibility is required. This can be illustrated by the case of one of the women who had been forced out of a ‘masculine’ profession. Polina (3–32, b. 1959) worked as an engineer-mechanic at a large machine-building factory before being made redundant. When looking for work, she discovered that in her role of engineer she would now be expected to carry out other tasks, which effectively rendered her profession ‘male’: There was a chance to get a job somewhere, but they needed men. They consider that men know more, and sometimes you need to climb up a tall appliance. And now they’re taking on engineers round here, but you need to be able to stand in for the fitter and understand certain things, and I’m not capable of that. (3–32–1) Other respondents also noted that the ability of men to carry out tasks such as lifting gave them an advantage in the labour market: Does your sex influence your success in looking for work? At the moment, yes. They prefer to take men as furnace operators, and not women. Why? Because men are always in big demand [laughs]. Despite the fact that they drink and bunk off work… A man, he can always lift something, carry something, do something, stay and do overtime without a fuss. Men are simply physically stronger. (3–33–1f) This tendency is even more pronounced in the new private sector. Even though women are generally prepared to accept lower pay than men, in small and medium-sized enterprises employers often want employees who can perform several functions, so that various auxiliary tasks such as loading, repair and guarding premises can be carried out without the need to hire extra staff. In this way, not only ‘gender-neutral’, but also classically feminine professions such as shop assistant can become ‘male’ positions in the new private sector environment: For example, the profession known as ‘manager’. If they take on a man, then at the same time he’ll begin to do lifting as well. That is, the owner will make him work in that way, but he wouldn’t be able to make a woman do that. Look, we’ve got a row of shops and they are asking for sales assistants. I thought, ‘I’ll go along and ask’. [But they said] ‘We need a man’—so that he can carry things. Therefore, it’s easier for men [to find work]. (3–17–1f)


68

There are, of course, women’s professions. In state shops. What, can’t men work there? Men aren’t supposed to work there. To sell, to stand behind a counter. There are private shops. There a man works and fulfils both the role of security guard and the role of sales assistant. But in state shops—women should work there. They are supposed to work there. (2–5–1m) The idea that only men can engage in multi-tasking reflects the strict gendering of jobs discussed in the previous section. A manager ‘wouldn’t be able’ to ask a woman to lift something not so much out of respect for protective legislation, but more because of deeply ingrained ideas regarding what it is proper for men and women to do. Thus, regardless of a woman’s physical strength, she is barred from certain positions. It should be stressed, however, that even women themselves tend to accept statistical discrimination as a fact of life. Very often they do not recognise discrimination as such, but rather take it for granted. Indeed, our respondents—women as well as men—tended to feel far more strongly about age discrimination than they did about discrimination on grounds of sex.6 The somewhat contradictory answers of the following respondent neatly illustrate the way in which women tend not to interpret their experience as resulting from ‘discrimination’: Does anything limit your chances of getting work? Well, basically, it seems to me, the fact that I’ve got a child. They see that the child is young, that means it will be forever ill, [it means] missing work—nobody needs [workers] on the sick… And does your sex influence the success of your job seeking? I don’t think so. At least personally, I haven’t experienced it. (3–35–1f) This woman makes no connection between her gender role and her sex, and thus does not see her sex as a problem. Other women likewise do not recognise their experiences as discrimination. One such woman, who claimed that while age discrimination was a problem, sex discrimination was not, revealed later in the interview that she had suffered sexual harassment at the hands of a former boss: Then I went to the private employment service ‘Ekopolis’ to try to get work and the director there offered me a job as his secretary. But I stayed there even less than a month, because the director began to propose relations not foreseen in my duties, and I had to leave. He warned me that I wouldn’t find better work than I had with him…now I see that he was right. (3–31–1f) Indeed, not only do many women not recognise discrimination, many of them consider it to be justified. Even some of those who experience it see employers’ decisions as legitimate. For example, the respondent cited above who complained that she had been


69

rejected by the tax police on grounds of her sex commented on her new job in a private firm: Oh, well, of course, sex doesn’t have any influence on maths, but it means something for employers. I’m convinced, for example, that, look, at the workplace where I work now, nobody is going to pay for maternity leave, that is, if it happens, they’ll simply, quite simply, sack me. But you can understand them looking at it from the employers’ point of view. Why are you going to pay someone for one and a half years in return for no work from that person? Not only that, they don’t even pay sickness benefit and the like; and, of course, in that sense it’s easier to accept a man. (2–58–1f) Similarly understanding of employers’ desire to avoid ‘unproductive’ expenditure was the following respondent who failed to get a job as a laboratory assistant because she was pregnant: Look, if I’d been a man, or even a woman, but not pregnant, I think that they would have, of course, taken me for the job. And as it was—they chucked me out. But now I think if someone came to me—if I was doing the hiring—and that kind of [pregnant] woman came along—I wouldn’t hire her either. (1–8–2f) These examples highlight the extent to which the unequal access to jobs on the basis of gender is perceived to be justified. It seems likely that if our female respondents think that women with children are an unproductive burden on employers, employers themselves are not likely to be more charitable in their views. We would therefore expect that there is widespread statistical discrimination against women in the Russian labour market. Paradoxically, what saves women in this situation is the gender segregation of the labour market. This means that certain jobs are considered ‘beneath’ men, while women’s ‘ownership’ of these jobs is usually strengthened by the low levels of pay they attract. Men’s experience of sex discrimination Men, in contrast to women, very rarely reported limitations in the labour market related to their sex. Asked which sex found it easier to find work, only four men out of thirty men in the Samara sample mentioned advantages possessed by female job seekers. In one case (3–09) this was simply because his wife happened to be more successful than him. The reasons given by the other respondents do more to highlight women’s vulnerability in the contemporary Russian labour market than their advantages, since these were related to bosses’ penchant for pleasant female assistants. As one of them put it: Does a person’s sex influence their success in seeking work in any way?


70

It depends on the area. If it’s for advertising agencies, then girls are probably better. Since enterprise directors are men as a rule, they feel more comfortable, if [they are working with] an intelligent woman. It’s easier for her to flirt a little bit and get orders. (3–37–1) Likewise, the only man in the entire sample who reported being a victim of sex discrimination seems to have encountered a boss who envisaged an employee who would go ‘beyond contract’. The respondent concerned had applied for the ‘female’ position of economist, and had been rejected on grounds of his sex: There was such a case [of discrimination]. I was absolutely suitable [for the position], [laughs] but the boss had made a request for a woman, and also of a certain age. I asked, ‘but won’t a man do?’, and he said that he needed a woman. (3–28–1m) These examples demonstrate that men may be disadvantaged in looking for certain administrative positions involving close interaction with a male boss. But above all they highlight the lack of regulation of the Russian labour market. This has resulted in what Simon Clarke terms a ‘feudalisation’ of employment relations (2000), one of the features of which is the attempts of some managers to assert a modern form of the droit de seigneur.

Discrimination and the shifting gender profile of professions The above section suggests that when a man and a woman compete for the same job the man, ceteris paribus, is likely to have an advantage. Such discrimination is limited by the high degree of consensus regarding the gender of particular jobs which means that men and women generally sort themselves into ‘appropriate’ work, and therefore avoid competing with each other. What complicates this picture is the fact that Russia is undergoing rapid social and economic transformation. In such a period new areas of employment are opened up and old areas are shaken up by changing pay differentials, job boundaries, and so on. During this process assumptions regarding gender difference and the desirability of men and women as employees become salient in shaping the pattern of demand for male and female labour. That is, in the absence of effective regulation, the gender restructuring of employment will in part be guided by assumptions such as those outlined above. Given that our research was not designed to investigate this issue, we cannot give a full overview of this process. Nevertheless, the experience of our respondents does provide local examples of this process of re-gendering. In our data, we found the most contentious areas to be construction, engineering and other ‘heavy’ or industrial professions to which women had been allowed access in the Soviet era, but for which they were now considered unsuitable workers. This had forced a number of our respondents to re-train for professions they considered to be more feminine. Such retraining was generally prompted by discrimination from employers and was undertaken


71

reluctantly. Overall, analysis of the job changes of our respondents during the course of our research suggests that the sphere of socially-sanctioned professional activity for women is shrinking. Given the starting points of our respondents, the analysis that follows focuses on the process of hiring, rather than the question of discrimination in layoffs. The latter is obviously an important part of the process, however, and evidence suggests that women may face a greater risk of lay-off.7 Before moving to discuss our findings, we provide an overview of the changing patterns of male and female employment in Russia as a whole. Table 3.2 shows the changing proportions of men and women employed in different branches during the reform era. The greatest fall in female employment in terms of absolute numbers was in industry (5.5 million between 1990 and 1998), while the greatest declines in terms of share of employment were in the traditionally female-dominated branches of trade and catering, banking and finance, in administration and in consumer services (Katz, 2001:216–217). This has coincided with an increase in wages in these sectors. For example, while jobs in banking and finance paid average monthly wages just below the USSR average wage in 1989, by 1998 they were paying nearly double the Russian average wage. The next best remunerated branch in 1998 was communications followed by trade and catering (ibid.: 234).8 The fact that the proportion of men working in these sectors has increased is consistent with the arguments laid out above. In order to investigate the way in which the gender restructuring of employment was reflected in our data, we conducted an analysis of the changes in profession which occurred between the first and final stage of our research. Of course, given the numbers involved, our findings cannot be seen as conclusive. Nonetheless, the number of women moving from ‘male’ to female professions (as defined by our respondents) was striking. Sixteen of the thirty-one women who changed profession had a ‘male’ profession at the beginning of the research (engineers and technicians in various areas, programmers, and a driver). As a result of the changes, only one of these remained in a ‘male’ profession. Meanwhile, although, as indicated above, some men have moved into areas, such as shop work, traditionally considered ‘female’, we encountered no such transitions in our data. The transitions are shown in Table 3.3. As can be seen in Table 3.3, the men in our sample changed profession approximately half as often as women (sixteen men ended up in a different profession by the end of the research, as opposed to thirty-one women). This may indicate that men face fewer barriers in the labour market and are less often pushed to change direction. Of those changes that did occur, three men (two cooks and a social worker) moved from these ‘female’ professions to ‘male’ professions in two cases (driver, depot chief) and to the ‘gender-neutral’ profession of journalist in the remaining case. The other cases either involved transitions between male professions or between different gender-neutral professions. Examples of the latter are the transitions from musician, psychologist and teacher to real-estate agent, lawyer and masseur respectively. Only in one case could the direction of a man’s transition be said to be away from the ‘masculine’ pole (the move of the engineer-physicist to the job of journalist), but even this is only a shift towards a ‘gender-neutral’ job.


72

Table 3.3 Professional changes of our respondents during the research period Men

Women

Former profession

New profession

Former profession

New profession

Loader

Entrepreneur

Accountant

Shop assistant

Engineer

Security guard

Accountant

Door keeper

Engineer-physicist

Journalist

Accountant

Dishwasher

Musician

Estate agent

Accountant

Entrepreneur

Cook

Driver

Librarian

Personnel manager

Cook

Depot chief

Technical engineer

Boiler-house operator

Psychologist

Lawyer

Driver

Hospital orderly

Fitter

Moulder

Chemical engineer

Marketer

Electrical-fitter

General worker

Construction engineer

Dishwasher

Electrical-fitter

General worker


Site manager

Social Worker

Journalist


Auditor

Technical mechanic

Fitter

Mechanical engineer

Store keeper

Technician

Machine adjuster

Engineer-physicist

Librarian

Product-researcher

Moulder

Engineer-physicist

Designer

Teacher

Masseur

Ticket-collector

Cleaner

Gas-electric welder

Caretaker

Master watchmaker

Shop assistant

Computer operator

Entrepreneur

Hairdresser

Director café

Bookbinder

Cleaner

Programmer

Teacher

Programmer

Travel agent

Psychologist

Office manager

Hospital orderly

Door keeper

Technician

Accountant

Technician

Conductor

Teacher

Computer operator

Teacher

Secretary

Teacher

Secretary


73

Seamstress

Shop assistant

Economist

Store keeper

Electrical mechanic

Data entry clerk

The vast majority of women who changed profession either moved between ‘female’ professions, or moved out of ‘male’ professions. As a result of the changes, only three of the women ended up in jobs which would be labelled ‘masculine’ by our respondents. One of these, the technical engineer turned boiler operator, had shifted between male professions, while the other two moved from female professions to become entrepreneurs, which is seen as a ‘masculine’ line of work by our respondents. In addition to the fact that the professional changes made by women show them moving out of ‘male’ professions, nearly half of the professional shifts made by women involved a drop in status, as can be seen in Table 3.3. Meanwhile, approximately a third of the shifts made by men involved downward mobility. The number of transitions our respondents made out of ‘male’ areas led us to look at all the women who had been in ‘male’ professions at the beginning of the research. Excluding those who dropped out before the final stage, they numbered twenty-nine, and by the final stage, only eleven of these been able to stay in male professions. Eight of these had not changed job, while three had endured a period of unemployment before finding work in a similar area (including the technical engineer turned boiler operator who changed profession but remained in a ‘male’ area). Overall, nearly twothirds of the women who began in male professions were not in them by the end of the research. Fifteen women had moved into female professions, while the remaining three were unemployed at the end of the research. If we look in more detail at the professional shifts of our female respondents, we see a common pattern emerging. Women working in core functions within ‘male’ areas of the economy have found it very difficult to remain in their professions after having been laid off, and have therefore been forced to change direction. In the late Soviet era, when these women chose to work in areas such as construction, engineering and programming, such choices were endorsed by the state. Indeed, there was a cachet attached to women working in such professions. This can be seen in the way in which our respondents describe their career choices. One woman who started out as an electrical rigger said that she saw such work as ‘romantic’ (3–21–1), while another respondent trained at a construction institute in heating systems for reasons she also described as ‘romantic, perhaps. At the time they wrote a lot about the construction of BAM [the Baikal-Amur Railway]… So those sort of reasons. I had some kind of rosy dreams’ (3–45–1). With the collapse of communism, however, such ideas were quickly eroded, and women who had opted for the ‘romance’ of working in areas associated with male stereotypes found themselves in a difficult position. As one such woman commented: At that time [in the Soviet era] very many women worked in construction, very many women. A woman-builder in our country—it was normal… Before women could work on machines, and in construction, and everywhere. You don’t find that in the West. And now…Naturally, if a man goes to a building-site they’ll take him, of course they will, [they’ll take] a man. That goes without question.


74

(3–10–1f) Like this woman, the majority of our respondents wanted to continue in the profession for which they were trained. Despite the existence of demand for their professional skills, however, they were unable to obtain work in their professions. After long periods of unemployment, most of them were forced either to retrain or to take work outside the profession for which they had been trained. The transitions of these women are recorded in the Table 3.3. Their reflections leave little room for doubt that they attributed their need to change profession to discrimination. We highlight this by focusing on two atypical cases of women from this group who managed to find work in the broad area of their interest. What is notable is that even in these ‘best-case scenarios’, the women concerned experienced open discrimination while seeking work. The case of Valya (4–23, b. 1956)9 had a positive outcome, but nonetheless involved professional compromise. Valya trained as a construction engineer, and had twenty years’ experience in various positions in construction. The peak of her career began in 1987, when she was appointed as the head of facilities management of the headquarters of the Syktyvkar state construction organisation (‘SyktyvkarGostroi’). Valya remained in this post for eight years, before being made redundant. She then endured eight months of unemployment during which time she reported experiencing discrimination from both employers and the state Employment Service. In our research interviews Valya came across as an impressive, energetic, bustling woman; she exuded an air of competence and efficiency. But her long experience and personal advantages did little to compensate for the overwhelming disadvantage of being a woman. As she reported: I was at the Employment Service, but they didn’t take me. They said that they needed a man. What kind of work did they need a man for? Work in construction. And you would have taken this work? I’d have been in my element. What’s the difference, organisational capability is needed everywhere. I wanted that job. In principle I would have agreed not to have a high wage… I think, what’s the difference, [the important thing] is just to have a job, just so as to have stable money, and that’s all. (4–23–3) Valya emphasised that she was willing to accept low wages, and was even prepared to work for a while without pay in order to demonstrate her skills: I even said, proposed, ‘Take me on for a month, six weeks, without pay, take a look at me, see me as a person, and then assess me as an employee… What are you afraid of?’ No, they were scared in that sense. One said that a man was needed, another [chap] said, ‘I was looking for a man.’ And I say, that sometimes it’s a woman you want; I’ve fulfilled a male role at work my whole life. Eventually they realised their mistake.


75

They took a man, but he wasn’t up to the job, they took another, again he wasn’t up to it, they took a third. Because they were dead set on having a man, and not a woman. So they ended up with nothing. (4–23–3) Eventually, Valya was able to find work as the site manager of a school. She referred to this work, with which she was very satisfied, as ‘masculine’. Nonetheless, the job entailed far less responsibility than she had enjoyed in the past. It is also notable that she was only able to find work in the femaledominated environment of a school. The second case concerns one of the three women who was able to remain in a male profession after a period of unemployment. Nadezhda (3–45, b. 1959), as mentioned above, trained in heating systems for ‘romantic’ reasons. Remaining in her chosen profession required enormous determination and patience. She was unemployed for eleven months, during which time she, like Valya, encountered discrimination both from employers and the Employment Service. While you were looking for work…did the fact that you were a woman have any influence? Yes, undoubtedly it was an issue. Probably the only stumbling-block in my profession was my sex…. How did you look for work? Well, the most basic step was the Employment Service. I registered in February. Then private employment bureaux. And, as far as possible, of course, through connections. I had…quite a wide circle of friends, but they couldn’t help. And the main difficulty was the existence of total discrimination against women in that sphere…. That is, there is demand for that profession, but they are only interested in men. In that trade they often need a boiler-house engineer or a boiler-house manager, or a foreman—adverts for those positions come up—and nearly always they only want men. At which stages does discrimination occur? From the beginning. Even in the advert they specify ‘men only’. And even in the state Employment Service? And in the state [service]. In that time, since February [3 months], they haven’t proposed a single job for me…. And at the private employment service, they offered me only one vacancy and there I didn’t suit the employer. There he also refused because I was a woman. But you said that although employers consider that profession male, at the institute lots of women studied it. Yes. The thing is, that when we studied, very many [women] worked at planning institutes, but I did purely hands-on work. Now it’s difficult to say who’s working where and in what capacity; when they contracted those institutes very many people lost their jobs. And where they ended up later, I don’t know. (3–45–1)


76

Nadezhda eventually found a job in her profession which represented an advance on her previous position through a private employment agency. In this respect her case is exceptional. What is far from abnormal in her history and that of Valya, however, is the experience of open discrimination while trying to find work in an area seen as ‘male’. The difficulty of women in non-traditional jobs is only one example of the way in which deeply ingrained conceptions regarding the superiority of men as employees are influencing the gender restructuring of employment. Another important arena in which prejudices against women may be salient is the new private sector. Some of the barriers women face in entering this sector were mentioned above, and the existence of such barriers is confirmed by the findings of large-scale surveys. Analysis of the ISITO household survey, for example, has shown that ‘women have a hard time obtaining jobs in de novo enterprises’ (Grogan, 2000:57). Judging from our data, even in relatively ‘feminine’ areas of the new private sector such as office management women can face discrimination. As one respondent, who was looking for such a job in a commercial structure, reported: And you know, in general, there are some interesting adverts: everything corresponds [to my characteristics], everything: higher education, everything, whichever criterion you take: education, preferably with languages, knowledge of computers, experience in a commercial structure, of, say, five years—I’ve got all that. There is interesting work in a managerial capacity, but—‘preferably a man’. For some reason they specifically put an accent on that. There it is. Up till now I’m out of work, and I can’t find a normal job…. There have been interesting adverts, but see I phone up: ‘But why a man?’ ‘Just a man and that’s it. That’s what our boss decided.’ That is, it’s quite categorical. They don’t try to get to know you. I say, ‘But perhaps I would suit you, perhaps some of my professional qualities would be what you need?’ ‘No, we need a man.’ (3–44–1) Examples such as this suggest that the gender hierarchy of the new private sector is likely to correspond to that of the wider labour market.10 Since men are considered more desirable employees, they will be given the better positions. Once again, however, it is impossible to see women simply as passive victims in this process, since they tend at some level to endorse this hierarchy of worth. For example, the respondent just quoted noted in the same interview: Women—women, how can I put it? Well, they talk behind your back, …it’s a purely feminine characteristic. Not every woman has it, but most. How to put it? Bitches [Stervy]. Bitches is what they are… That is, it’s much easier for me to work with men. And I, for instance, find it easier to be open, to trust [them]. When women themselves consider that they make undesirable co-workers, it is difficult to see why they are surprised that men ‘put an emphasis’ on hiring each other.


77

Most of the evidence we encountered in our data to suggest that a social bias against female employees was influencing the process of restructuring concerned women who had trained for ‘non-feminine’ professions during the Soviet era. Such women had effectively been left stranded. In the transition era there is no state interest in promoting women’s employment in nontraditional areas, and past propaganda campaigns evidently did not make a lasting impression on employers. Most of our respondents in this position have endured severe downward mobility or been forced to take more conventionally feminine administrative jobs. Our data also lends support to the view that the bias against women is shared by employers in the new private sector. Overall, we do not see a particular class dimension to the process of gender restructuring, but rather consider that the social bias against women is found at most levels of the occupational hierarchy. The main difference is that those hiring employees for poorly paid positions such as those found in health and education know that they have little choice but to hire women. But as soon as wages are high enough to command a choice of applicant, women’s position is likely to be in danger—as was noted above with regard to the increasing proportions of men entering formerly female preserves such as banking. In line with this, evidence from other sources leads us to suspect that the cases we encountered in our data were just particular examples of a much wider process. For example, case study research suggests that where jobs traditionally done by women are upgraded, men become the new employees of choice—as occurred at a Samara chocolate factory after it was bought by a multinational company (Romanov, 2003:234–249), a Syktyvkar printing works (Ashwin and Bowers, 1997), and the Syktyvkar bus company, where a desire to raise the status of the profession of conductor led to a concerted effort to hire men (Ilyina, 1998).

Conclusion Gender stereotypes act as an important mechanism through which the labour market is divided into male and female segments. Generally the contours of this segregation are clear, and men and women sort themselves into ‘gender-appropriate’ areas. But it is widely assumed that women make inferior employees—from both a biological and a social perspective. Given that labour market regulation is weak, employers are free to act on their prejudices, meaning men are likely to be given preference. This is particularly significant in a period of rapid economic change, and threatens women with an evernarrowing choice of work. Of course, as the trends in economic inactivity and unemployment reveal, women do continue to be employed. Paradoxically, a significant part of the explanation for this lies in gender stereotypes and segregation. First, as Ruth Milkman notes with regard to the Great Depression in her historical study of sex segregation in US industry, ‘ironically the rigidity of job segregation by sex protected many women from unemployment in the 1930s, for even unemployed men were disinclined to do “women’s work” and employers remained reluctant to hire them for it’ (1987:28). Second, such protection is reinforced by women’s readiness to accept low pay—which partly stems from an acceptance that they are somehow inferior. This means that many employers, whatever their preferences, cannot do without them (Ashwin and Bowers, 1997). It also means that women, as the professional transitions discussed above reveal, are often prepared to endure downward mobility in order to remain in work.


78

Finally, as in many other countries, the perception of women as meticulous, easy to control and ready to accept monotonous work can also work in their favour. All of this, however, implies that women will tend to continue to predominate in the lower-paid and less desirable areas of the economy. Of course, many women will succeed in breaking out of low-wage ghettos, but, on average, women remain considerably more likely to end up in low-paid work than men. This is generally borne out by the fate of our respondents, and is supported by other studies.

Notes 1 Up until then, the Soviet Labour Code was still in force. It was modified in 1988, 1992 and 1995, but these amendments were concerned primarily with the application of the Labour Code to changing property and contractual forms rather than with making substantive changes to the rights and protection of workers. 2 A woman is awarded 84 days before the birth in the case of multiple pregnancy, 86 days after the birth in the case of complications during labour and 110 days in the case of multiple births. 3 The views encountered among our respondents are similar to those found by Elaine Bowers in her research in Syktyvkar in the mid-1990s (Bowers, 1996). 4 This view has been advocated both with regard the Russian context (Ashwin and Lytkina, 2004), and Western countries (see, for example, Rubin, 1994). 5 This kind of ‘chicken and egg’ problem is one which similarly arises in relation to the pay of ‘men’s’ jobs—it is difficult to know whether they are well paid because men do them, or whether men do them because they are well paid (Katz, 2001:145). 6 For reasons of space our findings on age discrimination are not presented here, though it does seem clear that older workers face significant barriers in the Russian labour market. Approximately equal numbers of women and men of pre-pension age reported experiencing age discrimination in our data. The main gender difference was that women’s accounts suggest that such discrimination begins at an earlier age in their case. This probably reflects the fact that women retire five years earlier than men, though our older female respondents also stressed that physical appearance was increasingly important in all types of customer service roles, and they felt this counted against older women. For a discussion of this issue based on our data, see Zhidkova (2001). 7 A larger percentage of women among the unemployed have been made redundant, while men are more likely to leave jobs voluntarily (Katz, 2001:221). This can mainly be explained by the sectoral and occupational characteristics of women’s work, by the fact that women are less willing to leave jobs voluntarily, and that women’s lower pension age and higher life expectancy mean that greater numbers of women are pushed into de facto early retirement. Whether in addition to this women are discriminated against when redundancies occur is an open question (Clarke, 1999:180). 8 For more information, see Katz (2001:.234). 9 For further information about Valya, see Yaroshenko’s account of her career (2002:144–146). 10 At the same time, using RLMS data Grogan found that the gender wage gap was much smaller in the non-state sector than the state sector in both 1992 and 1998 (2000:107).

References Alasheev, S. (1998) ‘Analiticheskaya zapiska po rezul’tatam kontent-analiza predlozhenii rabochikh mest v Samaraskii gazetakh (Dekabr’ 1998)’, mimeo.


79

Ashwin, S. (2000) ‘Gender, state and society in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia’, in S. Ashwin (ed.) Gender, State and Society in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia, London: Routledge, pp. 1–29. ——(2003) ‘The regulation of the employment relationship in Russia: the Soviet legacy’, in D.Galligan and M.Kurkchiyan (eds) Law and Informal Practices: The Post communist Experience, Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 93–112. Ashwin, S. and Bowers, E. (1997) ‘Do Russian women want to work?’, in M.Buckley (ed.) PostSoviet Women, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Attwood, L. (1999) Creating the New Soviet Woman: Women’s Magazines as Engineers of Female Identity, 1922–53, Basingstoke: Macmillan. Becker, G. (1971) The Economics of Discrimination, 2nd edn, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bowers, E. (1996) ‘Gender stereotyping and the gender division of labour in Russia’, in S.Clarke (ed.) Conflict and Change in the Russian Industrial Enterprise, Aldershot: Edward Elgar, pp. 191–209. Bridger, S., Kay, R. and Pinnick, K. (1996) No More Heroines? Russia, Women and the Market, London: Routledge. Clarke, S. (1999) The Formation of a Labour Market in Russia, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. ——(2000) ‘The closure of the Russian labour market’, European Societies, 2, 4: 483–504. Filtzer, D. (1992) Soviet Workers and De-Stalinization: The Formation of the Modern System of Soviet Production Relations, 1953–1964, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Grogan, L. (2000) Labour Market Transitions in Eastern and Western Europe (Tinbergen Institute Research Series), Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam. Hansson, C. and Liden, K. (1987) Moscow Women: Thirteen Interviews, New York: Pantheon. Hendley, K. (1996) Trying to Make Law Matter: Legal Reform and Labor Law in the Soviet Union, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Ilyin, V. and Ilyina, M. (1996) ‘On the buses: management dynamics in a passenger transport enterprise’, in S.Clarke (ed.) The Russian Enterprise in Transition: Case Studies, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar: 333–392. Ilyina, M. (1998) ‘Konduktor: novoe litso staroi professii’, EKO, 13–14:101–112. Katz, K. (2001) Gender, Work and Wages in the Soviet Union: A Legacy of Discrimination, Basingstoke: Palgrave. Kozina, I. (2002) ‘Professial’naya segregatsiya: gendernye stereotypy na rynke truda’, Sotsiologicheskii zhurnal, 3:126–136. McAuley, A. (1981) Women’s Work and Wages in the Soviet Union, London: Allen and Unwin. Milkman, R. (1987) Gender at Work, Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Ovcharova, L.N. and Prokof’eva, L.M. (2002) ‘Sotial’no-ekonomicheskie faktory feminizatsii bednosti v Rossii’, in M.M.Malysheva (ed.) Ekonomika i sotsial’naya politika: gendernoe izmerenie, Moscow: Academia. Ridgeway, C. (1997) ‘Interaction and the conservation of gender inequality: considering employment’, American Sociological Review, 62:218–235. Romanov, P. (2003) Vlast’, upravlenie i kontrol’ v organizatsiyakh: Antropologicheskie issledovaniya sovremennogo obshchestva, Saratov: SGTU. Rubin, L. (1994) Families on the Fault Line: America’s Working Class Speaks about the Family, the Economy, Race and Ethnicity, New York: HarperCollins. Shelley, L. (1984) Lawyers in Soviet Work Life, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Sperling, V. (1999) Organising Women in Contemporary Russia: Engendering Transition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Yaroshenko, S.V. (2002) ‘Zhenskaya zanyatost’ v usloviyakh gendernogo i sotsial’nogo isklyucheniya’, Sotsiologicheskii zhurnal, 3:137–150. Zhidkova, E. (2001) ‘Bezrabotnyi, “ne podkhodyashchii po voszrasty”’, Rubezh, 16–17:66–86.

4 Work orientations and employment behaviour Gender differences? Sarah Ashwin, Irina Kozina, Irina Popova and Elena Zhidkova

One of the aims of our research was to examine the extent to which gender differences in employment outcomes were influenced by differences in the motivations of men and women. We began planning our research in 1998, in the midst of the controversy regarding Catherine Hakim’s ‘preference theory’ (1998; 2000). Her idea, in brief, was that women’s labour market outcomes in rich modern societies could primarily be explained by their preferences: approximately one-fifth of women were ‘home-centred’, another fifth were ‘work-centred’, and the remaining majority were ‘adaptives’, wanting to combine work and home (2000:6). According to Hakim, this heterogeneity of preferences explained women’s secondary position in the labour market: only a minority of women shared the same ‘preference’ for a workcentred life as men, and thus only a minority shared men’s success. While we did not consider the concept of preferences as innate and immutable properties of individuals to be sociologically useful,1 we were interested in exploring whether women had particular orientations to work which shaped their labour market behaviour, and, in turn, outcomes. We see work orientations as being formed socially, and subject to alteration through interaction with a changing environment. Given such a definition, we did think it plausible that gender differences in socialisation and experience could lead women to have distinctive work orientations. Initially, therefore, we looked for differences in the work orientations of men and women in our data. But it quickly became clear that this was not a productive approach. Analysis of our data convinced us that similar—though not identical—work orientations were found among both sexes. The key gender differences in our data lay not in work orientations per se, but in the constraints and opportunities faced by men and women, particularly in terms of the gender division of labour in the household and gender norms. This chapter therefore analyses differences in the way that men and women with the same orientation to work responded to the challenges they faced in the labour market. Our characterisation of work orientations was based on an analysis of our respondents’ answers to a series of questions: ‘Would you work if you had the financial possibility of not working?’; ‘What does/did your work mean to you?’; ‘Why do you choose to stay in your current job?’; ‘What do you like/dislike about your work?’; ‘What sort of job are you looking for?’. Aside from the first question, where respondents were asked to choose between pre-set responses,2 all the questions were open-ended, and responses were recorded within the interview transcripts. The answers were then coded using ATLASti 4.1. We initially coded a broad range of motivations which emerged from the formulations of our respondents: money; breadwinning; profession; career; social

Work orientations and employment behaviour

81

interaction; social recognition; stability; convenience, and the desire not to work. The incidence of these motivations in our respondents’ discussions of work is depicted in Figure 4.1. Using the coding, the research team described and dissected each of these motivations, in an attempt to identify the underlying logic of respondents’ reported motivations. On the basis of this exercise, we concluded that the different motivations could be grouped into three main work orientations which were distinct and irreducible to one another. These were: a professional orientation to work; an instrumental orientation; and a social orientation to work.3 Those with a professional orientation to work have a strong commitment to their chosen profession. Profession here is defined broadly, in line with the Russian meaning of the word professiya, which can be translated as ‘profession’, but also as ‘occupation’. This is quite distinct from the narrow Anglo-Saxon understanding of the word profession, which refers only to members of occupations enjoying high levels of autonomy and status, such as doctors, lawyers, clerics and academics (Luksha, 2003:62–63). In Russia, such professions are seen as being part of the ‘intellegentsia’ (ibid.: 77), but members of more lowly occupations are not denied the right to be seen as ‘professionals’. We have retained the Russian word because we think it reflects a social difference born of the Soviet experience: in the Russian

Figure 4.1 Ranking of work motivations (percentage of men and women mentioning them N=240) context, a driver, just like a doctor, can have a sense of pride in his or her ‘profession’, and have a strong attachment to it.4 In our definition, those with a professional orientation to work see their work as a means of self-realisation, and find it intrinsically rewarding and compelling. As will be seen, we found that professional attachment formed a key part of the identity of those with this work orientation. Those with an instrumental orientation to work regard work primarily as a source of income, that is, as a means to an end. We grouped under this heading those interested in providing for their families, as well as those interested in a high income for its own sake


82

(though some differences between these two groups are explored). Those who emphasised the importance of stability were also generally found to have an instrumental work orientation. Those with a social orientation to work see work as a key locus of sociability. They value work mainly for the company, and though instrumental motives may be present, they are not predominant. Along with the early critics of Goldthorpe et al.’s account of work orientations (1968), we found that the work orientations of our respondents were multi-stranded (Hill, 1976; Blackburn and Mann, 1979). Nonetheless, through an analysis of the answers to the questions mentioned above, we were able to identify what we term the ‘dominant’ orientation of the vast majority of our respondents remaining in the study to the last stage (157 out of 191). Respondents were usually not included because of material missing from the interviews, or insufficient answers to the questions. Where the information from the interview transcript was insufficient, we did not attempt to judge the work orientation on the basis of behaviour. Since we use work orientations to help explain behaviour, deriving orientation from behaviour would have led us into tautology, so we preferred to exclude these cases. Of the 157 respondents whose ‘dominant’ orientation was identified, 79 were men and 78 were women. Approximately half the respondents (48 per cent) were defined as having an instrumental work orientation. A professional work orientation was identified in 62 respondents (39 per cent), while 12 per cent were defined as having a social orientation to work. The latter category was distinct in that all nineteen of its members were women—a finding which is explored in the relevant section.5 As can be seen in Figure 4.2, the most gender-neutral of the orientations was the instrumental, with 52 per cent of men whose orientation we defined falling into this category, as opposed to 45 per cent of their female counterparts. By contrast, we found that the proportion of women with a professional orientation to work was slightly lower: 31 per cent of the women whose orientation we defined, versus 48 per cent of men. Given the nature of our sample, however, we do not attribute any special significance to the last finding. The Russian Centre for Public Opinion Research (VTsIOM) in the concluding year of our study found little gender difference in the proportions of those professing an intrinsic interest in work, and an instrumental orientation. Only 12.3 per cent of men, and 11.6

Figure 4.2 Dominant work orientations of men and women in percentages: men (N=79), women (N= 78)


83

per cent of women questioned agreed to the statement ‘work for me is important and interesting in itself irrespective of pay’. These figures highlight the fact that level of intrinsic motivation found in our study was boosted by our academic sample, most of whom had a strong interest in their work. Meanwhile, in the VTsIOM data 72.7 per cent of men and 70.3 per cent of women felt that ‘work is above all a source of income for survival’ (VTsIOM, 2001:83). Looking at Figure 4.1, it is clear that there are some gender differences in work motivation. Most obviously, women are more likely to mention social motives, convenience, and stability. This is in line with findings in Western Europe,6 and from larger data sets gathered in Russia. While women in Russia cite social motives and ‘convenience’ factors such as proximity to home as a reason for choosing a job more often than men, since 1991 pay has become increasingly important in the labour mobility of both men and women. Correspondingly, social and convenience motives have become less important in shaping women’s employment behaviour (Clarke, 1999:167–178).7 We found something similar in our data when we came to identify the ‘dominant’ work orientations of women: while social and convenience factors were often mentioned by women, they constituted the main motivation in choosing or remaining in a job in only a minority of cases. In the Soviet era pecuniary attitudes to work were frowned upon, so the growth in the number of Russians confessing to an instrumental work orientation in the post-Soviet era8 highlights the fact that work orientations are shaped by social and economic context. For the purposes of this chapter, we did categorise respondents according to their dominant work orientation, but we were mindful of the mutability of work orientations, which has been underlined by researchers in other contexts (Crompton and Harris, 1998; Procter and Padfield, 1999). Part of our purpose was to examine the extent to which the orientations of our respondents changed in response to the external environment. This was less of an issue for those with an instrumental orientation to work, but more so for those with a professional orientation who were often unable to find work (or decentlypaid work) in their chosen field. We therefore examine this issue in relation to those with a strong professional attachment. In the sections that follow, we take each of the work orientations we have identified in turn, examining the differences which exist between men and women sharing the same work orientation. We also analyse the way in which gender and work orientation interact to produce particular types of behaviour, and consider the particular challenges faced by men and women with each type of work orientation. We begin with those most challenged by the new Russian labour market— those with a strong professional attachment—and then move on to look at the experience of respondents with instrumental and social orientations to work.

Professional attachment in a transforming economy Professionalism was a source of pride in the Soviet era, but many professions have fared badly during the transition (Osinsky and Mueller, 2004). Many previously prestigious professions have lost their status or economic usefulness as a result of industrial restructuring, leaving formerly-devoted professionals feeling betrayed and abandoned. This section examines whether men and women with a professional orientation to work


84

respond in different ways to challenges thrown up by economic reform, and the implications of their responses in terms of labour market outcomes. The section focuses on those over 30 who acquired their professional qualifications during the Soviet era and therefore had to adapt to a world in which there was no longer a guaranteed job for every professional. Given the nature of our definition, the occupations of those with a strong professional attachment varied. Many of them were ‘professionals’ in the Anglo-Saxon sense, with the academics from our Moscow sample strongly represented, but the group also contained pilots, engineers and skilled factory workers who were no less devoted to their chosen line of work. When assessing the labour market outcomes for those with a professional work orientation, it is important to stress that these often have nothing to do with individual activity, merit or talent. In the reform era, the fortunes of individual professionals have above all been influenced by the wider fate of their professions. Those who had the misfortune to train in areas rendered redundant by reform clearly faced more difficult challenges than those whose skills were still required in the new Russia. This is a matter of bad luck rather than bad judgement: how could a young man training in the 1980s for the elite Soviet profession of pilot imagine the devastating tide of job and capacity destruction which would hit aviation as a result of reform? Given the nature of our data, it is not our intention to chart which professions lost and gained as a result of restructuring. Similarly, our data offer little insight into the gender effects of restructuring at a macro level. Those interested in these important issues are referred elsewhere.9 What our data do provide is information on the way that those with a professional work orientation respond to the challenges thrown up by reform. Given the nature of our sample, all the ‘professionals’ in our Moscow, Samara and Syktyvkar samples were by definition people who at the beginning of the research period were experiencing difficulties in the labour market. Occasionally, these difficulties were caused by individual problems such as poor health and alcoholism, but generally they simply resulted from the vicissitudes of restructuring: downsizing, falling wages, plant closure. Having said this, the challenges faced by respondents with a professional work orientation were not equal. Even though all of them were experiencing difficulties at the beginning of the research, the level of demand for their skills differed. That is, some had more chance to continue in their chosen profession than others. Despite this caveat, however, our data still provide a good basis to examine gender differences in the adaptation of those with a strong professional attachment to the new Russian labour market. For although individuals cannot control the level of demand for their professional skills, what is under their control is the way that they react to changes in demand. In order to identify whether significant gender differences exist in this area we examine professionally-oriented men and women in turn, focusing on the issue of adaptability. Professional men: ‘Waiting around for the sun to come out’? All the women who were sacked from the factory are working as a rule, even if not in their profession. But lots of the men have taken to the bottle, and are simply waiting around for the sun to come out, ‘enduring’. Husbands are enduring in the sense of suffering, and their wives are


85

enduring in the literal sense of getting through life and feeding their families. (Tamara, 4–13–1f)

This quotation from a former woodworker, now working as a hospital orderly after the closure of her beloved furniture factory, captures a common view of the differences between men and women in the labour market. Women adapt to new circumstances and get on with life, while men are unable to cope with challenges to their professional attachment. How far is this view supported by our data? We identified twenty-two men over 30 with a professional orientation to work, and charted their responses to the difficulties they faced, focusing on their ability to adjust. After analysing the trajectories of men and women with a professional orientation to work we were able to identify three main types of response differing in terms of their level of flexibility. These were: (1) a refusal to compromise professional integrity by changing job or doing supplementary work; (2) a hybrid response, characterised by a desire to maintain professionalism, but a willingness to do supplementary work in order to ‘subsidise’ a job in a poorly-paid profession; and (3) a flexible response, implying a willingness to sacrifice professional integrity in order to earn money. These responses were partially determined by situation. For example, when there were no jobs available in a given profession, it was clearly not possible for our respondents to take the second option of ‘subsidising’ work in a poorly-paid but well-loved job. Indeed, the latter strategy was confined to our sample of academics, but we felt it important to include it as a separate category, since academics did face a choice between option one and two, and some were unwilling to make the compromise implied by the second option. In line with the observation in the opening quotation, the most common response among our professional men was a refusal to compromise their professional integrity. Twelve of the twenty-two respondents with a professional work orientation responded in this way. This did not always have negative consequences, but carried an increased risk of long-term joblessness. In terms of our categorisation, the results of this strategy were as follows: one respondent ended up in our comfortable category; five were coping; one was poor, and five ended up in our excluded category. The only respondent in this group to end up with a ‘comfortable’ income above the regional average wage was an unemployed philosopher (3–42), who had been lucky enough to find a sponsor willing to give him a generous allowance to enable him to write books about Hegel. Four of those in our coping category were likewise academics (though unsponsored), as was the poor respondent. The remaining ‘coping’ professional was a geologist, who had worked all his life at an institute connected to the oil industry before being made redundant. His persistence had eventually secured him re-employment there, though on an informal, temporary basis. That half of these uncompromising professionals ended our research with an income above the subsistence minimum underlines the fact that the outcome of this strategy primarily depends on demand for the relevant profession. Where suitable work is available, such professionals are usually prepared to accept poor pay and conditions in order to retain their professional attachment. Given the instability of the Russian labour market, such persistence can sometimes pay off. At the same time, where there is little demand for labour in the relevant area, the risk of labour market detachment


86

and poverty is high. Overall, inflexible professionals made up half of the men in our excluded category (five out of ten in the group). All these men appeared to have become permanently detached from the labour market. The dangers of rigid adherence to a particular profession can be illustrated by the case of Volodya (4–35, b. 1964), one of the five respondents in this group to end up in our excluded category. His response to labour market change stands almost as an ideal type of masculine professional inflexibility. Volodya is from our Syktyvkar sample, a former pilot, thrown out of work by the dramatic cuts in the aviation industry. As he reported: At Aeroflot at our local airport there are only eight air crews remaining out of eighty. Therefore no one will take me on. My commander is working as a watchman at some hut [a kiosk]. Very many of them have turned to drink or died from vodka. (4–35–3) It was clear from his first interview that he viewed his profession as the core of his identity. He had taken his redundancy badly, as the following extract reveals: What did work mean to you and what does it mean now? For me work was something central, my own world or something. I don’t even want to talk about it now. It’s a sore point. It’s too painful even now. It’s like someone cut off the oxygen supply. Now I’m not even looking for work. I don’t see myself in any profession in today’s world. If I do look for work then it will only be for the money… All pilots begin to have problems when they lose work. Do you know how many of my acquaintances have taken to drink or have died from drunkenness? A pilot can’t imagine a different life; he loses himself and begins to drink, most often in order to suppress the pain of loss. My family, thank God, kept me going. Family and children also fill the vacuum in your life, especially when you lose your beloved work. (4–35–1) Such professional devotion appears common among pilots.10 Another pilot in our sample, Stanislav (4–02, b. 1952), whose inability to adapt matched that of Volodya, painted a strikingly similar picture of the problems of unemployed pilots: When I was flying, I didn’t drink at all… And now… Hardly any of my friends are left, they all turned to drink. And all of them are dying like flies, it’s simply terrifying. But it’s because there’s no future in life any more. Look, when I flew—that was, well, satisfaction. You find yourself in a storm, think, will I live or not, then you get through it, hit the runway—you’re on such a high to be still alive, there’s so much adrenaline, and you don’t need to drink. (4–02–4)


87

Volodya, along with Stanislav’s friends, felt there was ‘no future’ outside aviation, but two comments in his first interview provided grounds to hope that he would find a way forward. First, he reported that his family kept him going. As will be seen below, the pressure to live up to their role as main breadwinners does induce some men to pick themselves up after the loss of their ‘beloved work’. Second, he did suggest that he was willing to work for money. This expectation seemed to be realised at stage two of the research, when Volodya reported that he had found a job at a friend’s enterprise, paying well above the average wage for the region. This seemed to indicate that he was willing to compromise his professional attachment if the rewards were high enough. By the third stage of the research, however, Volodya was out of work again, after five months in the above-mentioned job. The wages had turned out to be lower than he was promised (a common experience among our respondents), and he had left the job of his own accord. Although he reported that he could get another job if he wished, he had reverted to thinking that adaptation was impossible. During the interview he listed numerous possibilities, only to reject them, as the following extract reveals: But is it possible to find other work? Have you tried? It’s possible. It’s possible to work as a fitter of gas [pipeline] equipment, like my friend, he’s also a former pilot. He gets up to 3,000 for that work, but it means enduring the cold, unfreezing pipes in intensely cold weather. I could work as a security guard, but I don’t want that kind of work for 2000.11 And what sort of work would you like? What sort of work would you consider good? The work I had [as a pilot]. I can’t imagine anything else for myself. (4–35–3) He was unable to take this imaginative leap, even though he admitted that his position was putting his marriage under strain. His wife, who worked at a beauty salon, was now the main breadwinner, and in connection with this he reported: ‘there’s already tension, it was there from the very beginning’. By the final interview things had only deteriorated. Volodya was still jobless, and his wife had divorced him, ‘probably because of work, because I’m not working’. The couple were still (of necessity) living together and Volodya, who had opposed the divorce, appeared to be trying to underline his indispensability through intensive home improvement. His chances of winning his wife back are hard to gauge, but it is interesting to note that her action had not led him to change his view on the possibility of adaptation. As he put it: It’s useless…: I’m not capable of doing business. I can’t cheat people. It’s a big moral price for me, on top of the constant absence from home … Aviation—it’s a particular system. There’s this saying: ‘Capitalism, Socialism, Aeroflot’. Aeroflot is its own system with its own values. That’s probably why people in Aeroflot are not fit for business… I don’t see myself in another job. I can’t be a security guard—that was offered me not long ago. I refused. (4–35–4)


88

By the end of our research Volodya found himself in our excluded category, and in spite of his comparative youth, there was little in the interview to suggest that he would take the measures necessary to improve his situation. Such long-term joblessness is accompanied by a high risk of demoralisation (Ashwin and Lytkina, 2004). Still, it is worth mentioning that one of our professionally-oriented respondents, Valery, an engineer (3–09, b. 1946), did manage to find a satisfying alternative to paid work. At the beginning of the research, his situation recalled that of Volodya. Asked what he required in a job he replied: ‘interest. Interest preserves the best in a person. Creativity and…machines are what I need.’ He likewise spoke disdainfully of the new professions which for him characterised the new Russian labour market: Trade—pah! Although you’ve also got to know how to trade and in my case I don’t.’ Although he initially seemed to be held back by his professional attachment, over time Valery acquired a taste for leisure. In preference to working, Valery, who was supported by his wife, spent his time renovating his house and this new life seemed to suit him. He was unfailingly cheerful during interviews, and appeared enchanted by his new freedom. As he reported in the third interview: I’ve been working for 38 years, and I’m tired of getting up at four in the morning. It’s as simple as that. I’ve accumulated a chronic tiredness… I’m scared that I simply won’t survive [if I work]. I’ve already felt like a free man, felt that it’s very pleasant to sit, to look at the leaves, [realised] that life, you see, isn’t at the factory. For 38 years I, like a Roman slave in the galleys, was chained by all those conventions, by the need for a pension. But the main thing is to stay alive until your pension! What do I need it for, life after my pension? You’ve got to live today!… At the beginning I had a sense of euphoria that I was seeing the sun. If we look beyond our work-focused criteria, Valery can be seen to have adapted successfully. But his case is an exception. Given the lack of legitimate masculine roles in the urban Russian household, and the paucity of opportunities for self-realisation outside work in a society with a weak civic sphere and poor leisure infrastructure, finding satisfying alternatives to paid work is very difficult for men (Ashwin and Lytkina, 2004). Valery was the only non-pensioner in our sample who managed it. It also carries a particular risk for married men, because of women’s expectations of them as breadwinners—indeed, the tension with his wife over his not working was the main threat to Valery’s contentment. Overall, therefore, refusing professional compromise can be seen as a response entailing an increased risk of poverty, social marginality and the psychological stress associated with these. The second type of response on the part of our professionally-orientated men was that of continued professional engagement subsidised by supplementary work. It was found exclusively among our group of Moscow academics, with eight of them adopting this approach to maintaining their professionalism. This highlights the fact that this strategy can only be pursued in particular circumstances—in which work is not only available in the relevant profession but in addition is sufficiently flexible to permit supplementary work. Where these conditions are met, this strategy appears to be successful—at least in financial terms. Six of the eight respondents who adopted this means of maintaining their


89

professionalism remained in the analysis until the last stage. Of these three ended up in our ‘comfortable’ category, two were ‘coping’, and just one had an income below the subsistence minimum. This strategy has the advantage of allowing men to retain their professional integrity while also generally enabling them to avoid poverty, and to fulfil their obligations as breadwinners where necessary. It does, however, have costs. The case of Sergei (1–31, b. 1949), an academic chemist, neatly illustrates both the advantages and disadvantages of this approach to maintaining professionalism. Sergei loved his profession, which he described as his ‘life’s work’, but the income he received from it was derisory. He was therefore forced to do additional work to subsidise remaining at the institute. His dilemma was clear: ‘My main priority is my family… But at the same time I’d like to do things, I mean work, that bring me some kind of satisfaction, and don’t arouse my hostility’ (1–31–2). He obtained his main supplementary income from working as a photographer, but did not want to devote himself fully to this: And photography…it’s, well, it was, a hobby, and I’d be very happy for it to rank once again as a hobby, if here [at the institute] my knowledge could earn me sufficient income… I haven’t got high demands… Well, so my wife…her boots have worn thin, and [I want her] to be able to buy new ones, and not think about where the money’s going to come from. (1–31–3) Thanks to his work as a photographer, Sergei ended up in our ‘comfortable’ category. His family had enough to live on, and he had regular work. But this relative prosperity came at a high price. His mood in the last interview provides a sharp contrast to the cheerfulness of Valery: In the last few years my life has been so harassed, it’s really true to say that I’m in a permanent state of tiredness…even, I’d say in a state of depression because of tiredness This state of tiredness has built up so much that sometimes simply…you feel tired of life. Not that life’s somehow useless. But simply sometimes you get so tired and think—good Lord! Why do I need all this?… It’s not that I’m, like,…thinking about suicide or anything—I don’t mean that. But the thought comes into my head—it would be a relief to have done with all this. That is, I’m all the time running somewhere, I’m always hurrying somewhere, I’m always in a state of time-trouble [tseitnota], and because of that there’s always something that I should have done and haven’t managed. I am by nature a slow person. I am by nature a one-job man. I am by nature a person who gets carried away. That is, I get caught up in some work—I’m happy and I give it all I’ve got. By when at the same time I’ve got five jobs, well, then, I begin to rush about, to dash from one side to another, and it’s with difficulty, with great difficulty, that I plan and co-ordinate my everyday life…and for me there’s already no joy in it. (1–31–4)


90

One way of resolving this was to concentrate on one line of work. But concentrating on his work as a chemist was impossible for financial reasons, and Sergei could not reconcile himself to becoming a full-time photographer. Thus, his love of his profession, though it did not prevent him from feeding his family, left him trapped in a state of permanent ‘time-trouble’ and overwhelming weariness. In this he was not alone. Another biochemist, combining his job at the institute with a part-time job at a cardiology unit on the other side of Moscow, described his dilemma in strikingly similar terms: It’s not possible to have the kind of calm, measured life which usually implies longevity, and that’s bad. Because your capacity for work falls, that leads to even more depression, and [you face] constant timetroubles because of your declining capacity for work. Problems are constantly building up… If this nervous strain and constant stress and time-trouble continues, I’ll simply break down. My organism is signalling that all too clearly. You’ve got too much work? Yes, and it’s stressful. Could you give up one or other of your jobs? There’s only one way, I repeat, and that’s at least to maintain my current income. Life is getting more expensive. And what’s the main thing that keeps you in your [main] job? The idea of what I’m doing… That is, you like it, it’s interesting for you here? Yes, and I don’t have anything else, also it’s already too late to re-train. (1–35–4, b. 1964) Again, this respondent’s devotion to his profession left him caught in a state of constant stress and tiredness, which led him to fear for his health. The strategy of ‘subsidising’ continued professional engagement cannot therefore be judged to be a wholly successful resolution of the low-paid professional’s dilemma. How did our ‘flexible’ respondents fare? We included in this category all those professionals who were prepared to take a main job outside their profession—that is, those men who proved willing to sacrifice their professionalism, at least for a period, in order to earn money. Only two men fulfilled this criterion.12 The first was a military helicopter pilot (3–24, b. 1971), who, like the pilots discussed above, described his work in positively rapturous terms, claiming it was ‘like a first love, which you can’t forget’ (3–24–1). Nonetheless, after a period of unemployment, he did work for a period at a rehabilitation centre for the deaf and dumb and continued in this job until he was given a chance to return to his profession. This return to flying meant serving in Tadzhikistan, a region officially classified as highrisk, but he appeared satisfied with this, claiming ‘these five years13 in Tadzhikistan are very important for my future, for our family’ (3–24–4). He ended up in our comfortable category, though as a result of his return to his profession, rather than of his compromise. A more striking example of the flexible male professional is provided by the case of Vadim (3–37, b. 1960), a journalist by training. Vadim felt under enormous pressure from his wife to provide for the family—a fact which he always mentioned in relation to


91

any job changes he made. At the beginning of our research he was unemployed, but by the second stage of research he had found a job as chief editor of a youth paper. Although he liked this job, the payment was irregular and his wife was dissatisfied. He then spent a brief time working as a caretaker and freelance decorator, the latter of which also gave him some satisfaction. His wife, however, ‘was worried that the orders would suddenly stop, and I’d be left without work. It’s not stable; you have to be always looking [for orders]’. Motivated by a desire for a regular income, by the third stage of our research Vadim had taken a job as an ordinary factory worker. He was repeatedly asked by the interviewer how he felt about his dramatic change of status, and his attitude was one of resignation: What’s good about being a worker? You’ve got independence, you’ve done your work and, fine, you’ve got nothing to lose. And about the work itself, what is there to say?… There’s nothing good about it. Above all, the financial side is what matters here. And you see the bosses value me, and I also like that. (3–37–3) He tried to make the best of the situation, drawing on Soviet themes of the moral superiority of simple workers, along with characteristic denunciations of the corruption of the powerful: With workers it’s always good, there’s no hypocrisy, there’s no one to scheme against, and no reason either. What is there to scheme over?… I don’t need anything now, not a career, nothing. Look, I see that in our country a boss can only be a person who knows how to order people around, just to order around, and not to lead. Here I…find myself, in a working-class environment, and there are normal relations, the foreman talks [normally] and there’s no need to shout, scream and order around. For example, Auntie Natasha got drunk, an experienced machinist, she got drunk and laid down to sleep. She’s a brigadier, and Slava the foreman came up to her and began to wake her up, ‘Wake up, wake up, you think you’ve come here to sleep?’ She rubbed her eyes and began to work, without getting upset, without any problems. The higher you go, the less likely you are to find normal relations. There it’s already such a cesspit, so dirty. You need to scream and shout in front of the whole corridor: ‘I am really working here, and you are sitting there doing nothing, how are we going to get things done?’ And you need to shout like that loudly so that the boss hears. It kills me. (3–37–3) Despite this declared distaste for his profession, by the final stage of research Vadim had happily forsaken his life among the simple workers for the position of chief specialist in the press centre of Samara oblast’ tax office, a job found for him by his friends. Here he was using his professional skills to a limited degree, though it was a far cry from his youthful dreams of journalistic success. As he put it in the last interview:


92

I’ll be a third-rank advisor of the tax system, as I get older, a second-rank adviser. [Sarcastically] That’s happiness, mental equilibrium! Now I’ll get my happiness from my children. I didn’t find my own. If before I wanted to become a famous journalist, a professional, a specialist, well, it didn’t work out. I didn’t manage to find creative satisfaction. (3–37–4) Vadim had thus laid aside his professional ambitions in order to fulfil his obligations as a breadwinner. He ended up in our coping category, though he may well have been classified as ‘comfortable’ had he remained in his job at the factory, which was better paid than his job at the tax office. Vadim’s case reveals that some professionally-oriented men are capable of a flexible response to the challenges of the new Russian labour market, but it also highlights the intense difficulty of professional compromise even for those highly motivated to provide for their families. Vadim—the most flexible of our professionally-oriented men— eventually took a pay cut in order to be closer to his profession, while it seems his experience at the factory had been far more challenging than he admitted at the time. Describing his negotiation with his wife regarding his move to the tax office, he explained: Prestige is not the most important thing for her, the most important thing for her is money, the family. But she took it calmly. Even though I said it would mean less money, she said, ‘Take it, I know that in your heart you’re longing for it’. Vadim’s ‘longing’ to work as ‘a third-rank adviser’ at the tax-office bears poignant witness to the strength of professional attachment of men in this group. Indeed, the behaviour of all these men suggests that professionalism for men constitutes an important part of identity, which cannot be discarded without serious psychological difficulty. The response of professionally-oriented men to the new Russian labour market is not uniform, but maintaining professional identity is a priority for all these men. It is notable that by the end of our research none of them had settled into jobs outside their professions. When pursued rigidly without regard to labour market demand, this desire to maintain professional integrity not surprisingly carries a high risk of long-term joblessness and demoralisation. But even a more flexible response has costs. The men who chose to ‘subsidise’ their professional activity faced enormous stress, constant ‘timetrouble’ as they put it, while those who made bigger compromises had to deal with feelings of disappointment and frustration. With the exception of Valery and the sponsored philosopher, all our professionally-oriented men suffered as a result of the declining fortunes of their professions. The extent of the unease in this group suggests two things. First, that the work orientation of professional men forms part of their identity which cannot simply be discarded. Second, for this reason, a professional work orientation constitutes a constraint in the new Russian labour market. Of course, for those with skills in the right areas, it can also be an advantage. But for our male respondents, who had seen the fortunes of their professions wane with the advent of reform, professional passion was transformed into a source of tension and abiding dissatisfaction.


93

Women and professional attachment Does a professional work orientation also hang like an albatross around the necks of the women in our sample? First, it should be noted that in negotiating their responses to the labour market, men and women face a different set of normative constraints. Most notably, men who define themselves as professionals face a dual pressure: a personal need to maintain their professionalism, and a strong social obligation to perform as breadwinners. Women are expected only to be ‘second-order’ breadwinners (Kiblitskaya, 2000:91), and in this sense can ‘afford’ to work in poorly-paid professions without any threat to their status in the household. Whether or not they can afford this in a financial sense is another question. We initially thought that the professional attachment of some of our female respondents might be sustained by the financial support of a male breadwinner. In this sense their dilemma would not be comparable to that faced by the professionally-oriented men in our sample. But this proved not to be the case. First, half our professionallyoriented women over 30 were not married or cohabiting. Second, in only two cases (1– 12; 1–17) did the husbands of the married women earn significantly more than they did, while in a further two cases the situation was reversed—respondent 1–34 was supporting her jobless husband, while respondent 4–09 earned over three times the wage of her husband. As for the two women apparently supported in their work orientation by the husbands, in the case of respondent 1–17, Oksana, this was a new situation preceded by a long period in which she had been the main breadwinner. Oksana’s history is examined below. The professional attachment of respondent 1–12 was facilitated by the support of her husband, however, who earned more than double her wage. As she acknowledged: Well, if my husband got really very little perhaps I’d have to move somewhere… If I was in the same situation as…[my colleague] who hasn’t got a husband, and two grown children, and at this job she, naturally, earns a pittance, she’s really got to, she works at another two jobs… I don’t know whether I could carry that kind of load or not, because my health is weaker. (1–12–1) Given the nature of our sample, we do not know whether our findings are representative, and it may be that the situation of respondent 1–12 is more common than it appears in our data. But leaving this issue aside, since only one of our professionally-oriented women was supported in her work orientation by her husband, we argue that it is possible to make meaningful comparisons between the responses of our professionally-oriented male and female respondents to the challenges they faced. As in the case of men, the majority of our female professionals were not prepared to compromise their professional integrity. Nine out of sixteen of them did no work outside their profession. None of these women were out of work at the end of the research period, and half of them ended up with an income above the subsistence minimum, two of them ending up comfortable according to our categorisation and three of them coping. Although, unlike our uncompromising men, none of the women ended up detached from the labour market as a result of their determination to maintain their professional


94

integrity, just under half (four) of them ended up with an income below the subsistence minimum. In one of these cases (1–12), the respondent concerned, as mentioned above, was supported by her husband. The others were all working at the botanical garden in Moscow, enduring poverty for the sake of their professional attachment. One botanist (1– 04) talked enthusiastically about her work and said that she could survive on her pay. But it was clear that she was severely limiting her consumption—she reported, for example, that ‘although it’s shameful’ she was sometimes forced to economise by not paying her bus fare (1–04–3). Respondent 1–14, a biochemist, likewise reported that her pay covered only her rent and food. At the same time, however, she could not imagine doing a different job: Well, in general, it’s very difficult, of course, to tear yourself away from your profession. Of course, it’s difficult to tear yourself away. I understand that it’s easy for a shop assistant to tear themselves away from their trade, but for us, of course, it’s difficult and unpleasant. (1–14–3) Her feelings were echoed by respondent 1–06, a botanist, who could not imagine doing a different job, despite her dissatisfaction with her meagre pay: For all that, our work is relatively creative, and if you worked somewhere, even using our professional skills… Well, where can you use our profession? In some kind of offices there, well,…watering the flowers. I mean, looking after the plants. Or—on a state farm—well, that’s completely, maybe, not the work for me. And if you think about work using foreign languages—office work, probably, well, it’s also…generally uncreative work. (1–06–2) This respondent’s somewhat comical attempt to envisage using her botanical skills in an office environment only serves to underline her inability to consider another job. Whether, faced with the closure of the garden, these women would opt for the radical rejection of other alternatives adopted by Volodya the pilot is difficult to say. But clearly for these women hardship is easier to endure than professional compromise. Only two of our professionally-oriented female respondents used supplementary work to subsidise their continued professional engagement. This corresponds with our own findings and those from larger data sets showing that men are more likely to take on additional work than are women (see Clarke, 2002:75–78). One of these women (4–10) used supplementary work as a temporary strategy while she improved her qualifications in order to secure a pay rise in her main job. The case of the other respondent Oksana (1– 17, b. 1959), a research chemist, suggests that professional compromise is no less painful for women than it is for men. Oksana was married to the leader of her research group, also one of our respondents, Boris (1–19, b. 1964). Both respondents were highlymotivated professionals, although they expressed this in somewhat different (and gendered) terms:


95

I like my work. Overall, I like that type of work. You could say that it’s in some way similar to the kitchen, and in general biochemistry is this kind of thing [tails off]. In what sense a kitchen? A kitchen in the sense that it’s a method of preparing solutions. It’s precise work with substances, as well as bits of equipment. That is, it’s work with your hands, it’s something in the middle between the kitchen and preparing food. (1–17–1) Yes, of course, I like [my work]. First of all, it’s pretty creative. Here you’re not doing the same old thing everyday, you’re doing new things. Well, for me, it’s pretty interesting. (1–19–1) Both were highly satisfied with their work, but the financial problems of their laboratory meant that they were very poor. Oksana reported that for a long time she tried to convince herself it was possible to live on bread and free entertainment such as reading. Finally, however, she decided that she needed to secure more income, and so she took on supplementary work as an estate agent. Asked whether she was now the main breadwinner in the family, she evaded the question, saying that her husband was engaged in the important work of preparing grant applications in order to secure the future of the laboratory. Oksana was prepared to put her husband’s career first, and she claimed that she had no ‘passion for career progression, especially in the conditions we face now’. But at the same time, her own professional attachment was strong, and she had no intention of giving up her job at the laboratory. As she put it, she needed science for her ‘soul’ and the estate agency only to feed ‘the body. Because there is no soul there.’ Still, she tried to make the best of it: [T]hat work is considered, was considered and will be considered, for a long time to come apparently, dirty. And yet. I work in quite a big agency and my own understanding has changed dramatically since I ended up there. Because, first, I’ve seen very many completely normal people [working there]. There in general they’ve got this criterion—they don’t hire people without higher education. People absolutely have to have…a brain. (1–17–1) By the fourth stage of research, however, the laboratory had obtained one of the grants her husband had applied for, and Oksana was able to give up her job at the agency. At this point it became clear that she had found working outside her profession a trial. She admitted it had been ‘difficult’ because she was ‘not indifferent to what those around me think of me’. But Oksana’s aversion to work in the commercial sphere went beyond social embarrassment. She seemed to view her lucrative second job as literally corrupting, polluting, deadly:


96

I went through some kind of difficult period connected with all kinds of different illnesses… Well, let’s say, I had these bad thoughts that I had cancer. Along with that I was in an awful psychological state. Well, and naturally, after a number of visits to the doctor it was established that thankfully it wasn’t the case…. Moreover, I’ve got this feeling that it’s a consequence of the accumulation of all that negative energy in my [supplementary] work. So I gave it up—thinking that should put an end to the stress, but, look, it all immediately went away. One after the other. (1–17–4) This quotation graphically illustrates the extent to which Oksana had been troubled by sullying herself in the ‘dirty’ world of commerce. She had been prepared to take on the traditional male role of chief breadwinner in order to free her husband to steer the laboratory through a lean period (successfully as it turned out), but this flexibility cost her dear, putting her under intense psychological strain. This was despite the fact that she was able to continue working in her main profession. Oksana’s case reveals that even women seemingly lacking ambition do not find professional re-orientation any easier than do men. Only four of our professionally-oriented women demonstrated a willingness to work outside their professions. Nothing can be said about the influence of such flexibility on the income of these respondents, since they all ended up in different categories. In terms of assessing whether women find professional compromise less challenging than do men, the evidence is mixed. They did not find giving up a well-loved profession easy, but on the other hand neither did they sink into demoralisation as a result of this action. This is well illustrated by the case of Tamara (4–13, b. 1964), a widow living with her only son and her sister. Tamara trained as a qualified wood-worker and worked at a furniture factory in Syktyvkar continuously until it closed in 1998. She loved her job, and certainly considered herself a professional: The conditions were good, I liked everything about it. First, the work itself; of course, you perform [just] one operation, but the furniture takes shape literally before your eyes…and we were all great [factory] patriots, because Syktyvkar furniture was highly rated. It’s simply a miracle when from bits of wood you get something beautiful, and you participate in that. I never got sick of it. In addition to that, we had a really good collective, young—the factory was new—they took on new and young people, there we all became professionals, they built up a really good team, it was rare for someone to leave. We were friendly, like a family… It was our factory, we experienced all her problems as our own, we felt ourselves, as they used to say then, as ‘the owners of production’. (4–13–1) As can be seen, although Tamara would not be considered a professional in the AngloSaxon sense of the term, her enthusiasm for her work equalled that of the professionals discussed above.


97

After the closure of her enterprise, Tamara took a job as a hospital orderly in order to support her family. She claimed that taking low-skilled work had been the general reaction of the women among the 2,500 who were laid off when the factory closed: As far as I know, more than half are still unemployed, the girls somehow began to find new work quickly, some in shops, some as conductors, some as orderlies—unenviable work, but you get paid for it, and you’ve got to feed the family haven’t you? But take the men—they wait, they won’t take any old work. (4–13–1) The compromise in her working life was not easy for her, and Tamara experienced feelings of professional inadequacy and humiliation in her new job: It’s hard. Not so much physically as morally, it’s that kind of work… it’s not really valued, you constantly feel that you can do a lot, and here—you clean the floor, help the sick around…it’s somehow uncomfortable telling my acquaintances that I work as an orderly, I’ve got a specialist training, a profession, but here—do you need a lot of intelligence to carry a mop around? Although, of course, you interact with people, you feel that you help, that’s nice. Here there was one old man, he was always saying that the next time he would definitely ask to be on our floor again, he liked it, the way we looked after him. And I said to him, ‘I’ll be gone by then.’ ‘Where?’, he asked. ‘Well, where? To the furniture factory’, I’d tell him. (4–13–1) By the final stage of our research Tamara was still working as an orderly, though she continued to follow developments at the factory—as she noted, Russians ‘are optimistic’. She hoped to return there eventually to the profession that she loved. In the meantime, her feelings about her job at the hospital had not changed: I’m really not afraid of any kind of work, I haven’t got any complexes on that score, but, you’ve got to agree that it’s impossible to be happy with this situation, to accept that cleaning floors is really all I’m capable of in life. Therefore, you look to justify yourself I suppose, that that was how life turned out, and so you try to do more here, additional work, you help the nurses—in order to feel like a human being. And not someone who cleans the floor. And that’s as far as you can go—you can’t make a career here. I laugh about the idea of a career, but all the same a person’s got to grow, and how do you grow as an orderly—wash things cleaner or something? (4–13–4) It is clear from this quotation that Tamara’s professional compromise was not easy for her, and no doubt her dream about the revival of the furniture factory was one among many coping strategies.


98

At the same time, Tamara was far from despairing and seemed to find solace in her family life. She was proud of the way that she, her sister and her son lived together as one family and portrayed her household as a site of mutuality and happiness.14 Likewise, she portrayed her frequent visits to her house-bound mother, who lived in a village outside Syktyvkar, as a source of satisfaction, and spoke of the importance of giving her mother the best care with no trace of resentment. Overall, Tamara’s role as a carer appeared to provide her with an alternative source of meaning which made work bearable. As she commented in the third interview, asked whether she was looking for work: At the moment… I’m not actively seeking [work], I don’t ask around—all because here there’s a convenient shift system, and I can pay my daughterly debt to my mother by looking after her. You see the shift system is so convenient—you work for twenty-four hours, and then you’re free for two or sometimes three days. And it’s near home. And apart from that there’s nothing—the pay is low. (4–13–3) Overall, although Tamara did not like her work, in interviews she conveyed a sense of optimism and inner harmony. This, we would argue, stemmed from the sense of accomplishment she gained from being a successful household manager and carer. Tamara’s professional compromise was a source of frustration, if not of dangerous anxiety as in the case of Oksana. These cases do to some extent support Tamara’s judgement that women are ‘enduring in the literal sense of getting through life and feeding their families’, but they do not suggest that such endurance is significantly easier for women than it is for men.

Professionally-oriented men and women compared Our discussion shows that men and women with professional work orientations have a lot in common—indeed, much more than we initially expected. Both groups are averse to compromising their professionalism, and find it difficult to adopt a purely instrumental attitude to work. This in turn means that professionally-oriented women cannot be assumed to be more flexible than their male counterparts. In line with this, the proportions of professionally-oriented men and women showing a preparedness to work outside their professions did not differ significantly in our data. Having said this, none of the professionally-oriented women in our data displayed what could be termed the heroic rigidity of Volodya (4–35). Only one of them ended up out of work (3–39), and this was because of poor health rather than an unwillingness to compromise. Meanwhile, none of the men were able to reconcile themselves to working outside their professions for a sustained period in the manner of Tamara (4–13). We therefore cannot discount the idea that professionally-oriented men cling more tenaciously to their professional attachment than do women, but the difference is certainly more marginal than we had anticipated. Moreover, we do not see the main difference between professionally-oriented men and women as lying in the level of professional attachment or adaptability. Rather, we would argue that the difference lies in the compensations available to them outside the


99

workplace. Given the weakness of civil society and lack of leisure facilities in Russia, the main alternative source of meaning to work lies in the private sphere of domesticity and family. Both men and women tended to look for meaning in their family life in the face of problems at work. Vadim, the journalist (3–37), found fulfilment in his children, and was very concerned to provide for their future, while Tamara gained a sense of accomplishment from her role as carer and household manager. But breadwinning is a less stable source of non-professional self-realisation than caring or running the household. While the latter can be sustained in the face of low wages or unemployment, the role of breadwinner obviously cannot. This brings us back to the starting point of the previous section. We did not find evidence that professionalism was less important to women, and only weak evidence that professionally-oriented women were more flexible than their male counterparts in dealing with challenges to their professional attachment. But women are socially less constrained than men in determining their response to challenges to their professionalism. They can, for example, decide to reduce their consumption in preference to looking for more lucrative work without this violating local gender norms or damaging their standing in the household. A struggling male professional, however, is likely to have problems in discharging his role as primary breadwinner, while his social standing may be adversely affected by low wages. Professionally-oriented men therefore face a dual challenge which we would argue places them at greater risk of various forms of social stress than their female counterparts.

Instrumental work orientations: flexibility in a changing labour market? An instrumental work orientation is one in which work is valued primarily for the financial rewards it brings. The importance of decent wages in the context of the contemporary Russian labour market cannot be exaggerated, especially for our respondents who at the beginning of our research faced either unemployment, poverty or the need to establish themselves in the labour market. In our data approximately equal numbers of men and women had a predominantly instrumental orientation to work: 35 women and 41 men. This orientation was found in different age and social groups, and in those holding a wide variety of professions. We did, however, find generational differences within this group, with our younger respondents displaying attitudes towards money which would have in the past have been frowned upon as ‘anti-Soviet’. We also found a distinct sub-group of young men within this group who attempted, in so far as possible, to avoid work altogether. In comparison to those with a ‘professional’ or ‘social’ orientation to work, the employment choices of those with an instrumental orientation to work are less constrained by preconceptions regarding the ‘suitability’ of different types of work. The most important consideration regarding any job is whether it pays the bills. This implies a certain level of flexibility, although this does not in itself determine the employment strategy of respondents in this group. While some in this group were mobile (34 of them changed jobs during the research) and were prepared to change profession (23 of them did so), others were more concerned with stability, and therefore clung on to jobs which appeared to offer this. At the same time, given this group’s preoccupation with income


100

levels, it is not surprising that over two-thirds of them did supplementary work during the course of the research (51 respondents). The following discussion is divided into three parts, focusing on three subtypes of this work orientation. The first section considers the traditional ‘breadwinners’, both male and female, whose main concern is to support their dependants. The second and third sections discuss the two sub-groups of younger respondents mentioned above. In all cases gender differences (or the lack of them) are highlighted. Breadwinners When considering this group it is important to appreciate the situation in which our respondents found themselves when we began our research—one in which they were unable to secure a decent income through their work. In most of the cases discussed below the ‘instrumentality’ of the respondents in relation to work has more to do with survival than with a desire for a particular standard of living. Their employment behaviour is primarily shaped by a desire to feed themselves and their dependants. Despite this common goal, however, the strategies of this group differ considerably, in part because of other constraints. In order to explore gender differences among those primarily motivated by a desire to provide, men and women are considered separately. Male breadwinners Those aspiring to be primary breadwinners in contemporary Russia do not face an easy task. In the new Russian labour market, a decent, stable, well-paid job has the status of a holy grail. In addition to this difficult environment, our male respondents also have their inner demons to deal with. Even those with an instrumental attitude to work have a concern for their status, which constrains the work they are prepared to take. Men tend to resolve these problems through performing supplementary work, which can be used as a means of achieving sufficient income, on the one hand, while maintaining stability and/or status, on the other. Although men often say that they are ‘prepared for anything, as long as it pays’, they tend not to be as flexible as their rhetoric would imply. Retaining status is important to them. Status is determined both through the job itself-the skills it requires, its position on the occupational ladder, how it is viewed by others—and by the level of pay. A certain level of pay will therefore compensate for a job which is low-status in other respects. The levels of pay men consider acceptable are significantly higher than those seen as reasonable by women. When we asked our respondents to name the monthly wage below which they would not work at the third stage of our research, we found that the mean male reservation wage was more than double the female mean at 3,208 roubles, versus 1,550 for women (n=184; 87 men, 97 women). These results need to be treated with some caution, particularly those for men, since the standard deviation from the male mean was 6,525, nearly six times that for women. This partly reflects the way in which male respondents traded pay against status and other job characteristics when deciding the level below which they were not prepared to go. But with regard to both pay and status they demonstrated a rigidity which was much rarer among our female respondents. The logic of male face-saving is clearly revealed in the following quotation:


101

If they call me a cleaner and are going to pay me 5,000, that’s fine, let them write ‘cleaner’ in my labour book… It’s now all the same to me what I’m called—I need money. And I need money because of my child, not for myself. I buy myself new trousers—that’s enough, they’ll last me a year. But to get him sorted and educated [is a different matter]. (3–15–2) This respondent was unemployed for nearly two years, supplementing his income with informal work. By the last stage he had obtained a job with a title which would not disgrace his labour book: deputy manager of security. As he explained: ‘It sounds good. Why did I take the job? The pay is low, 1,500, but I work there twenty-four hours and I’ve got three days off.’ This low-paid job therefore enabled him to reconcile his demands for status—deputy manager of a quintessentially masculine line of work ‘sounded good’—while also allowing him, by virtue of its highly convenient shiftsystem, to continue to earn money through secondary employment. Many male breadwinners are also quite risk-averse. Obviously their degree of caution varies with age, education and skills, but wariness with regard to change was nevertheless a distinct feature of this group. Given the instability of the Russian labour market, this is not surprising. Many of our respondents experienced false promises during the research—jobs which were offered but never materialised, desirable pay packages which were held out at the moment of hiring only to be retracted once pay day came around. Given such experiences, rumours of duplicity on the part of employers are rife, and this inhibits ‘maximising’, ambitious strategies among those with a strong sense of responsibility for providing. As one electrician, who worked for the municipality, explained: If someone offered you better-paid work would you take it immediately? I’ve simply got used to it, I don’t like running from place to place. And then, of course, when you go to a new job they offer you a lot, but in the end it turns out to be even worse. A fraud. The person who has his dacha next to mine changed [jobs], and now he regrets changing, but it’s too late to go back. So, you see, a good position will never go begging. In our life, the early bird catches the worm. If you’ve got a job—hang on to it until they kick you out. (4–53–3) By the end of our research this respondent was earning 1,000 roubles in his main job (just over half the local subsistence minimum), and even this paltry amount was paid late. Nonetheless, he was still not looking for work: because I’m scared. I’ve worked here for a long time, but at a new job they might suddenly lay me off or something, and then there might be nowhere to go… You’ve got a place—sit there until they chuck you out. (4–53–4).


102

Like the respondent discussed above, he was augmenting his income with supplementary work. Overall, therefore, few of our male breadwinners were motivated by their desire to provide to pursue a restless search for the best-paid job. Only nine out of twenty-nine of them changed job during the research, and only four changed profession. Moreover, these professional changes occurred within the framework of similar professional and status categories (for example one driver became a car-mechanic, one loader found a job as a delivery agent, which involved some loading). The risk-takers among this group were generally young. Three of them, for example, all of whom ended up in our ‘comfortable’ category, experimented with private entrepreneurship (respondents 3–07, 4–26 and 4– 36). The most common form of labour market activism among this group, however, was carrying out supplementary work. The vast majority of men in this group (25 out of 29) had secondary employment during the course of the research. This was their way of reconciling the need for status and/or stability with the need to provide. It is notable that the major exception to this—a low-paid man who refused all supplementary work (4– 14)—was a single father who was struggling to replicate the domestic regime of his late wife. He considered that ‘there must be order in the home, and both of you have got to be healthy. Money doesn’t decide everything.’ Most of these respondents, however, did not have to take responsibility for order in the home, and therefore chose to deal with their difficulties as breadwinners through supplementary employment. Female breadwinners The female breadwinner is an important figure in contemporary Russian society. More than ever, families are unable to survive on one income, meaning that the earnings of women are highly significant. Meanwhile, given Russia’s inadequate safety net, single women with dependants usually need to work. The majority of women with an instrumental orientation to work in our sample saw themselves as breadwinners. Whether or not they were the highest earners in their families, these women were driven by a sense of responsibility towards their dependants. Twelve of the thirty women in this group were married. Even where they were not the highest earners in their households, they considered themselves to be the rocks on which their households were founded, while they viewed the men in the household as unreliable earners. In a number of cases this was because their husbands had problems with alcohol (1–61, 3–43, 4–43, 4–54). The outlook of women in this group is neatly captured in the following exchange with one of their number. Asked why she had named herself as the main breadwinner, she responded: He [her husband] can chuck it in [his job] and lie down. I can’t do that. Generally speaking he’s working at the moment, but, judging by the fact that he didn’t work until this month, I don’t even know how to put it. I’ve got a sense of responsibility, perhaps. I’ve got the kind of work that I can’t just drop. I’ve got stable earnings and I cling on to that job. But him—they’ve got work at the moment, then there won’t be any, and that means that we’ll once again live on my pay. (3–43–2)


103

This sense of responsibility is shared by the single women in this group. Single mothers are obviously likely to feel a keen need to provide, but some of the single women without children in this group felt a similar obligation to their parents, as can be seen in the comments of the following former teacher, who had taken a job as a secretary in a commercial firm. In the quotation she initially justifies her career choice in terms of her own aspirations, but it becomes clear that her major motivation is her desire to provide for herself and her mother: I would like to work in my profession. I like working with children. There was a chance, mum’s got some acquaintance…who could get me a job in a school. I thought: 200–100 roubles. I thought: Irina, forget about beer, about chocolate, about nuts, about bars, about make-up, about any kind of clothes. You can forget about that once and for all. Money is the most important thing. At the moment I’m in a simply hopeless situation… I live with just my mother. My mum works at a factory. She’s an engineertechnologist. If I leave that work [at the commercial firm]—that’s it. We’ll be in debt, we’ll be practically beggars. Well, we won’t starve, but we’ll live terribly simply. So now I’m even pleased about this work…. My mum says to me: ‘Ira, I bow down before you.’ I say, ‘Mum, there’s no need to talk like that, I’m not doing anything supernatural.’ Now we’ve started to allow ourselves lots of things. Things are much better in terms of food. I bought myself a few clothes. I gave mum some presents, and friends and acquaintances. In general, life has become a lot easier, easier. Because now that work helps us a lot. A lot. Why did you have to take on that [responsibility]? My mum is a person from a different generation. If she lost, for example, the job that she’s got, that is, she overall, she’s a person who doesn’t know how to survive in the modern world. To look for a new job somewhere there…she’s just not that sort of person. She’d be done for. Immediately. Simply. (2–32–2) By contrast, dependence on the older generation was more common among young men with an instrumental work orientation, as will be seen below. The women in this group are thus driven by their sense of obligation to others. Many of them do not particularly enjoy work. Nearly all the women in this group said that they would like to work less given the choice, and half of them said that they would give up work altogether if that were a financial possibility.15 This underlines the fact that these women do not define themselves in relation to the type of work they do, but rather in terms of their relations with others. Their role as the pillars of their households is central to their identities. For this reason, the nature of the work they do and its status are generally not important to these women. In this sense they are more flexible than their male counterparts for whom status considerations (at least at work) are more salient. This flexibility reveals itself in the mobility of these women and their readiness to take low status jobs. Fourteen out of thirty women in this group changed job during the research, while eight of them changed profession—substantially higher proportions than


104

our male breadwinners. In a number of cases this involved taking a low-status job for the sake of the money, as can be seen in the following two examples. Lyuda (3–33, b. 1960) was an engineer by profession who divorced her alcoholic husband more than a decade before the research began, a move which left her with two children to support. During the perestroika era she took a number of jobs with little regard to their status (site manager, decorator, boiler house operator). Each time she changed job it was in search of better pay: ‘because there wasn’t enough money and I needed somehow to support the children. In principle all my labour activity has been directed to earning more money’ (3–33–1). This desire for higher wages was not based on exalted aspirations, but rather on the need to maintain a basic standard. During the first interview, for example, Lyuda reported how her son’s teacher had given him a very low mark for Physical Education because he did not have the right kit ‘so I had somehow to buy one’ (3–33–1). By the end of the research she was still working as a boiler house operator, doing occasional work as a decorator when she got the chance. She wanted to improve her prospects by taking a computer course, but was unable to do this because she was saving up to pay for her son’s higher education. The only way out Lyuda could envisage was finding a ‘sponsor’, a ‘prince’, but she realised this was only a dream: ‘Who would look at me? I’m completely worn out, dressed like a tramp. I’m eternally in a lather, running from work, running to work, running to the dacha’ (3–33–4). She described her life as ‘grey and dreary’ and was unable to name the happiest event during the two years of our study. Aside from the prince-fantasy, her hope lay in the idea that her son would get a place at an institute, and would combine this with some secondary employment so he could at least support himself. Tanya (3–32, b. 1959), another engineer with higher education, ended up taking an even less prestigious path. In the early 1990s she began working as a shuttle trader, travelling to Moscow to buy goods to trade in Samara. She continued in this line of work until 1998. After a brief period of unemployment, during which she experienced ‘all the joys’ of sex discrimination, she took a job as a cleaner in a shop with the hope that she would eventually be taken on as a shop assistant. She did not like this work—‘do you think a person with higher education can be satisfied with a job as a cleaner?’ (3–32–2)— but was prepared to do it for the money. By the final stage of research she was pleased to have found work as a store keeper: The pay is better, and finally I’ve got away from the floor cloth.’ At this point she was teaching herself to use computers with her girlfriends in the hope of further advancement. In this sense, she could not be said to be indifferent to her status, but was nevertheless willing to sacrifice it when she thought it was the only way to survive. The female breadwinners did not only differ from men in their readiness to take lowstatus work. They were also far less likely to have regular secondary employment. Only two of the women in this group did supplementary work throughout the research (1–53, 2–41). This supports findings to be presented in Chapter 5 that supplementary work is generally not done by women because it is considered the duty of the male breadwinner. It is notable, however, that while the majority of single mothers did some supplementary work, they did so only occasionally.16 This may indicate that domestic duties act as a barrier to performing additional work, though women’s flexibility regarding their primary employment may also mean that they see less reason to ‘subsidise’ a face-saving main job with secondary employment.


105

Money as the basis of self-realisation and independence Pursuit of money is the basic life interest of a small sub-section of those with an instrumental work orientation. The members of this group are well educated (all of them have higher education, and some have more than one degree), optimistic, confident and ambitious. They differ from the breadwinners analysed above in seeing a decent income as the basis for self-realisation and independence, rather than as a means of fulfilling social obligations. This group was almost universally composed of the young—only one of them was over 30 (3–44f, b. 1963). It was also the group in which gender differences were least visible. We found equal numbers of men and women of this type (five of each), with strikingly similar attitudes. Given that none of them had started families, there was also little to distinguish their social position and practices outside work. To the Soviet-socialised scholar, this group’s attitudes to work appear distinctly postSoviet in their open ‘egotism’ and eschewing of collective goals. Above all, these respondents are concerned about their income, and, as will be seen in the case study presented later in this section, they are concerned about it for its own sake, not in order to provide for others. Their pragmatic approach to work is well captured in the following quotations: In principle, work is less important to me than money. That is, not the fact of self-realisation, nor career. If the pay is normal and the work isn’t dirty then a career itself doesn’t interest me, but that’s if there’s enough money. (3–38–1m) Simply now my overall aim is—I want big financial rewards for my knowledge and capabilities. For the sake of pay, high pay, I am capable of paper-pushing, but I won’t stop at that—I’ll teach myself economic and legal issues and so on. (2–60–4f) In choosing a job we often, I’m judging by my friends, we are all prepared to put up with some shortcomings in a job. As long as it’s well paid. It’s not important that there’s a lot of work, it’s not important that the work is complicated, difficult, not important that, perhaps, you don’t fit into the collective. (2–11–1m) Of course, it is possible that the attitudes found in this group are simply those of ambitious young people of any era, and differ only in rhetorical terms from those of their Soviet forebears of similar education and temperament. This is difficult to judge, though it is possible that the experience of growing up in a climate of insecurity in which money offers the best protection has shaped the aspirations of this group. Whatever the case, in terms of future trends the women in the group are the most interesting. The men occasionally couched their desire for high pay in traditional terms, citing their role as (potential) breadwinners: ‘What kind of man are you if you can’t bring home the bacon? Get it where you want, but bring it home’ (2–11–1). The women, by contrast, were keen


106

to put off becoming mothers as long as possible. That is, as will be discussed below, they appeared to be rejecting the model of the self-sacrificing Soviet superwoman. In terms of their labour-market behaviour, this group are eminently adaptable. They feel at home in the post-Soviet labour market, and are prepared to live by its rules. They are ready to work intensively in return for decent pay, or the prospect of it, and are unafraid of long hours: I’ve understood that to be carrying the maximum workload—it’s actually a good state to be in… I had work, work, work, there were loads of questions, loads of people, I had to work to the extent of physical tiredness, to the state of exhaustion. (2–60–4f) [I work] from seven until ten [at night], although in principle they could call me to work at two or five in the morning, no problem. As before, I also do supplementary work two or three times a month. (2–11–1m) They are also flexible, and prepared to be mobile where the realisation of their aspirations demands it. This reveals itself in a variety of ways: a preparedness to get additional education where necessary (as did 1–13f, 2–08f, 210f and 2–38m); a willingness to migrate in search of work (several of those from Ul’yanovsk moved to Moscow or considered it); a tendency to search for jobs in several fields simultaneously. Meanwhile, most of the men and women in this group took on supplementary work during the research period. The only gender difference in this regard was that the secondary employment of the men was slightly more intensive. The behaviour of this group is no doubt partly shaped by their demographic characteristics, but their orientation to work and family can also be said to facilitate risk-taking. Not surprisingly, given the combination of their youth, education, flexibility, and drive, this group were successful in realising their goals. All of them ended up in our ‘comfortable’ category, earning more than the average wage for their regions. Several of them received promotions and pay rises during the research. For example, the Stakhanovite young man, quoted above (2–11), increased his income in his main job (as a financier in a commercial firm) sevenfold during the course of the research. One of the interesting questions about this group is whether the young women in it represent a new breed of career women, who are turning their backs on the Soviet model of successful womanhood, which required success not only at work, but also in the domestic sphere. In order to examine this question, the following case study highlights the aspirations, attitudes and practices of the young women in this group. Zina (2–10, b. 1977) is a psychology graduate from the University of Ul’yanovsk, who at the time of her first interview had just graduated and already had a job which she had been combining with her studies. She was also married, although her husband had been called up for his military service before they had had time to establish any kind of family life. Zina quickly decided that if she wanted to earn a good income she needed to move to the capital:


107

I’m going purely for the pay. In Moscow there are loads of prospects and possibilities, that is…there are certain possibilities in particular for selfdevelopment, and so on. In Ul’yanovsk that is by definition not possible, because you don’t know the options. What are the options there, where can you go? What sort of labour market is there for our profession? And, in general, what sort of market is there [in Ul’yanovsk]? (2–10–1) She initially found adaptation difficult, but gradually settled down and found ‘people who kind of supported me, a girl I knew’. Finally, searching through the internet, she found a job as a secretary in a commercial firm. This represented a drop in status, as well as a change in direction, but Zina accommodated herself to this with ease. As she put it, ‘It is first of all for my time in life, first of all, well-paid work. Unconditionally. Well, the practice is kind of well-known—all managers start as secretaries.’ The point of her education was, she considered, to earn her money, and she saw little point in working as a teacher for ‘200 roubles, which doesn’t buy anything’. By the time of the final interview she had received a promotion to the post of office manager, and her pay had doubled as a result. She was satisfied with her position, pleased with her achievements, and ready to move further: Well, they hired me for that work in order to pick up the phone and say, ‘Hello, good morning’. Now, I’m already at a different level… I’ve already worked out a plan since, well, I’ve finally decided what I want from life and where I want to go in the area that interests me—something connected to market research, advertising and so on. Zina was also proud to have achieved financial independence from her parents; although she had not begun to help them, she was no longer ‘hanging round their neck’. She also felt confident of her own abilities, and considered work the most important thing in her life: ‘At the moment work is, in principle, my life. Because it begins with the fact that most of the time you are at work, sometimes at the weekends too.’ Far from seeing herself as a Sovietstyle heroine of labour, however, Zina considered that she was living and working for herself: I am now building my life on the basis of my own desires. My desires are now focused on myself. My wish is to fulfil my own desires, what I want. I am earning money in order to, to be able to, as it were, stand on my own two feet to a certain extent. Right now, I want ever such a lot exclusively for myself. As well as seeing work as something she did for herself—rather than to support others or in pursuit of some higher aim—she had little interest in the home-making that in the past had defined a successful Soviet woman. She had grown apart from her husband: I haven’t got a family. Not as such, I don’t know what to call it, but it’s not a family. I’ve changed my view of that situation because…my


108

relationship to my husband changed, [and with it] my attitude to the possibility of us having a family in the future, a family life. The thing is that I’ve grown up, not grown up, but reached a different kind of cultural level, with different expectations of life. In part, this distancing was caused by his lack of economic success, and what she saw as his immaturity. She was not willing to have him ‘round her neck’: I live alone and I’m already not supporting him and there’s no sense in doing so. In moral terms—yes, sure, support, advice, ideas when he wants them… But to carry him, as it were, there is that expression ‘to carry him’, to do something, run after him, think for him—I’m not going to do it… He really is…like a young baby… That is, he’s used to someone constantly sorting things out for him at home… That doesn’t suit me. Nor was she keen to begin a family with someone else: ‘One thing is a relationship with a lover, but family relations are quite another.’ In her early twenties, she imagined that having a child was something she would want in her thirties. For the moment she was keen on her freedom, and considered that ‘a child is, in actual fact, a very expensive source of satisfaction and a big responsibility’. In this she was similar to other young women in this group. They also considered it wise to delay childbirth. As Alla put it: ‘It’s better for a woman to delay having a family until she’s 30–35… Those who marry young have nowhere to live, no job, live off their parents, then their family falls apart, overall it’s a mess’ (2–60–4, b. 1976). This respondent was coming under strong pressure from her parents to marry, whose alarmist line, she reported, was: That’s it! You’ve got two years left. Otherwise you’ll never get another chance to marry.’ Calming them down was the only reason she could see for marrying, for she had no desire to be tied down to domesticity: I really love my freedom. Or, to be more precise,…not freedom, but independence. To come home in the evening…you come home, you haven’t been there for twelve hours, it’s chaos, as if some tramp or something had turned the whole flat upside down, you watch the tele, it’s bedlam, and you’ve got to clear it up. (2–60–4) As can be seen in Alla’s reported conflict with her parents, these attitudes mark a distinct break with the Soviet tradition of marrying young, and combining work and family life. Whether the views and practices of these respondents are part of a wider generational shift away from Soviet norms is less clear. In terms of declining fertility, these women are clearly part of a wider trend. In terms of their overall approach to life, however, this group of ambitious young women constitutes only a minority of our female respondents under 30. They could be part of an avant-garde pointing the way to a more egalitarian, but also more individualistic, future in which women turn their backs on the tradition of maternal self-sacrifice. Or they may simply be unwilling to squander the joys of youth on nurturing others—that is, having enjoyed a period of freedom, they may eventually


109

succumb to parental pressure and take up their double burden. But even if the latter is the case, it is unlikely that they will simply reproduce the Soviet family relations and with them the acceptance of a secondary position at work.

The desire not to work: post-Soviet ‘parasites’ Most of those with an instrumental work orientation, with the possible exception of the group just discussed, to some degree regard work as a ‘necessary evil’ required in order to earn money. Some of the young men in our sample, however, stood out from the others with this work-orientation, distinguished by their degree of hostility towards work and their ambivalence towards the idea of integration into the ‘adult’ world of regular employment and family. In social terms they are similar to the previous group: young, well educated, single, and possessing financial support (either from their parents or savings). They also, like the previous group, emphasise the value of personal freedom and independence. But for them, such freedom is not to be found by making money, but rather outside the world of work. This group is composed exclusively of men. It comprises four men in their twenties and three in their thirties. These men prefer to work as little as possible. Five out of seven of them said that they would prefer not to work at all if they had that financial possibility. They seek self-realisation in leisure activities, and their priority is to maintain an ‘alternative’ lifestyle centred on their hobbies and interests. These interests include music, literature, drugs, exploring the meaning of life: My goal is simply to live. Yes, in general, to somehow grasp hold of life … I lack a sense of meaning in life, I lack something like that, the core probably… That’s what I lack. I am spending all my time only on that. (2–52–4) There are some kind of things…which don’t interest me, and in principle work falls into that category. Well, it’s in actual fact contemporary life—it excludes, in principle, the creative. Now all creativity is used in the service of technology, and that, in actual fact, doesn’t interest me. That is, you can separate things: an occupation is one thing, but work is the thing for which they pay you money. So, look, I think that you need to arrange life in such a way that you work in order to give you time and money for an occupation. (3–47–1) These men work only when they need money, and in some cases because of the social pressure on them to become socially integrated through regular employment. They are equally reluctant to marry, for this would bring with it financial responsibilities and a greater need to work. As the respondent just quoted, Alexei (3–47, b. 1964), explaining his decision not to look for informal secondary employment at a time when he was unemployed, put it:


110

If I had children I would, perhaps, have thought about what I could do, but for myself—no. I am a free person. Yes, that makes life easier in obvious ways. It’s not just in obvious ways, I would say that it makes life very much easier. So many times in the last 5–6 years I’ve thought: ‘God, what a great bloke you are, that you didn’t get married!’ You just can’t imagine. I literally think that. To me it’s not just in obvious ways, it really makes my life easier. (3–47–2) He continued by saying that he saw family and children as really ‘serious’, ‘on a different level’—and not for him. This desire to avoid integration into the ‘serious’ adult world is common to all these respondents. Given these goals in life, the labour market strategy of this group unsurprisingly consists of work avoidance, where possible. When forced to work in order to earn money, this group look for employment involving the least time and physical and mental energy—that is, they look for ‘convenient work’. Where this is not available, they survive on occasional earnings combined with handouts or their reserves. The four respondents in their twenties, for example, were reliant on parental support and the earnings from occasional informal work. Two of them tried to continue their education, but both dropped out before finishing. Because of their particular requirements, such men find it hard to find jobs that suit their needs and are therefore prone to long periods of unemployment or economic inactivity. One of these respondents (3–28, b. 1965) did not work for even one day during the research period, and made his money through selling securities (often far from successfully). In the light of their work orientation, the outcomes for this group are unsurprising: low pay, irregular employment, combined with periods of unemployment. At the end of the research period only one of the men in this group had a regular job (3–46), while over half of them had incomes below the subsistence minimum. Alexei, for example, was in debt and out of work after a failed business enterprise. He was occupying himself with a form of experimental writing which he referred to as ‘contemporary samizdat’, but this generated no income. He was still living with his parents, and was not looking for work because he claimed there were no decent jobs available. His only income came from occasional work in construction. What Alexei might mean by a decent job is illustrated by the case of Pavel (3–46, b. 1962), the most successful of this group in conventional terms. Pavel did not finish his higher education because it ‘got boring’. During the early perestroika era he had some involvement in small business, and by the beginning of our research he had just left a well-paid job in a private firm trading compact discs. He left for reasons with which Alexei would sympathise: ‘I was sick of it all…because it was already ceasing to be a passion and becoming…a business.’ This move left him unemployed, a state in which he remained for eighteen months. Finally, having run down his reserves, he took a job offered to him by a friend. This suited his purposes since it required him to work only 3– 4 days a week, in return for a salary above the regional average wage (3,500 roubles a month). He did not find the work interesting, but enjoyed the rest of his life. He lived with his parents, which left him free to live as he pleased: ‘I read, I meet with friends, [go


111

to] the cinema, [use] drugs, alcohol. That is everything, as a matter of fact. Football, fishing’ (3–46–4). He had no desire to increase his hours at work, since he claimed he had enough to do with his time. He would only do so, he said, for serious money: he named the ‘price of freedom’ as $1,500 a month. It is doubtful that this type of ‘work’ orientation is new: most modern societies possess minorities who shun conventionality in favour of creativity and some idea of authenticity. We do not have the data to assess whether the ranks of such men are increasing with the greater freedom of expression allowed in post-Soviet Russia. But leading a life on the margins in the manner of these men is certainly easier in contemporary Russia than it would have been in the Soviet past. In Soviet society, as Oleg Kharkhordin has observed, ‘Collectives were everywhere. A Russian entered a collective as a small child, passed from one to another in the course of life, but was never (normally) outside a collective. The network of collectives constituted the entire terrain of social life’ (1999:87). In such a society it was much harder to rebel—not becoming a member of a ‘labour collective’, for example, opened a person to the charge of ‘parasitism’. The new freedom also has a price, however: as Chapter 7 will reveal, it is now much easier for people—especially men—to fall through the cracks. Finally, the intriguing question of why we found no women in this category has no easy answer. We do not think this finding was coincidental, but providing a full explanation for it is beyond the scope of our study. The way in which men and women are socialised and integrated within the primary Russian ‘collective’—the family—is probably significant, and this issue is explored to some extent in Chapter 6. The narrowness of the socially sanctioned roles for men discussed in Chapter 2 may also be important: it is difficult for men who are not focused on work to find their place in Russian society. Women with little desire to work, by contrast, can express this in terms of the socially legitimate aspiration to keep house for a male breadwinner, as did the young respondents 2–17 and 4–03. While this may not keep such women out of poverty, it leaves them less at risk of social marginality and its attendant dangers than their workavoiding male counterparts.

Work as a locus of sociability A substantial minority of our female respondents work primarily for social reasons: to get out of the house, to meet people, to feel connected to the world. Work is seen as intrinsically valuable, but because of the social opportunities it offers, rather than because of its content. Nineteen women in our final sample (but no men) had predominantly a social orientation to work. This form of work orientation is structured by the Soviet legacy, in the sense that such women feel that it is natural for a woman’s sociability to find an outlet in the workplace. At the same time, they tend to give priority to their role as mothers and household managers. Women with this work orientation can therefore be seen as inheritors of the Soviet ideal of combining work and home. As such, when they have children or other time-consuming domestic responsibilities, their main aim is to find ‘convenient work’ which fits in with their other duties. Ten of the women in this group gave priority to the convenience of the job (in terms of its shift system, proximity to home, and so on). All of these had school-age children. This, therefore, appears to be a


112

life-cycle effect—women with a social orientation to work will generally prioritise convenience when their children are young. Not surprisingly for a group composed of ‘combiners’, the vast majority of women in this group were mothers. The only exceptions were the two young respondents who had not yet left home, and a respondent (1–15) who had wanted children, but had been unable to have them for health reasons. We suggest that the lack of men in this group is due to their position in the household. Women tend to develop this work orientation as a complement to their other main life interest: family. The latter commitment, because of the domestic confinement it entails, tends to create a need for regular adult company. Men’s marginal position within the household means that they have no need of work as an ‘escape route’ from the domestic arena. Rather, they need work either to fulfil the role of main breadwinner, or to give them a sense of meaning which it is hard for them to gain in the domestic sphere. Given that women in this group are working primarily for social rather than economic reasons and tend to prioritise convenience, it is not surprising that they are concentrated at the lower end of the labour market: ten of them were earning wages below their regional subsistence minimum at the fourth stage of the research, seven were in our ‘coping’ category, and two of them fell into our ‘excluded’ category. The fact that more than half of the working women were earning wages below the subsistence minimum underlines the fact that the Soviet-era tradition of combining convenient work with domestic duties now incurs an economic penalty. The first thing to be said about this group of women is that, though they lack ambition and tend to structure their work life around domestic demands, their attachment to the labour market is very strong. These are emphatically not women who would prefer not to work given the right economic circumstances. In response to the question, ‘Would you work if you had the financial possibility of not working?’, seventeen of the respondents in this group answered yes, and only one respondent (4–55, b. 1951) was sure that she would prefer not to work. This reply was conditioned by her poor health, however—she said that she enjoyed working because it offered her company, but now found it physically uncomfortable. The woman who was unsure (4–07) was 45 years old with two children under 6 and a husband in irregular employment, so her lack of enthusiasm for work at the time of the interview probably resulted from accumulated tiredness. Overall, women in this group have a strong social need to work. Although they value their families, they have a horror of confinement within the home. Some of the older members of the group express their needs in terms redolent of the Soviet era, and emphasise the importance of the collective, and of work: Interaction at work is really important, as is the collective. Now that probably seems laughable, but then [in the Soviet era] the collective, work in the collective, meant a lot. It was important to feel that you were making a difference. I couldn’t work like that for myself, I’d work less well [for myself]. (3–21–1, b. 1945) Now at my age, of course, money of course plays a role, but basically I am accustomed to socialising with people… Because I always worked with people, I was always surrounded by people… Even more because I


113

was brought up as a communist—everything, so to speak, was done in order to produce a punctual, conscientious person…. Now perhaps these days young people aren’t like that, I don’t know, well, but my husband and I are like that, even exceedingly responsible, probably… I can’t survive without work, it’s my nature, I mean, supposedly it’s important to relax, but when I’m at home I’m always doing something. You’d think you’d sit and relax, but I don’t. (3–34–1, b. 1956) A more universal theme is that work is a ‘rest from home’, a chance to socialise, a chance to feel like a woman rather than a domestic slave:17 Of course, for me the most important thing at work is the company. If you don’t go out and meet people, but sit within four walls, then you can go mad. (4–30–1) Work, it’s…first of all, you forget about your routine domestic work, and at the same time in the collective you always feel different. And work at the same time keeps your standards up. At home you go around with your hair in a mess, unwashed, without any make-up on, but at work—you dress appropriately, and you try to make sure that you’re speaking properly, not like at home. I think that work keeps a person’s standards up [podtyagivaet cheloveka]. (3–40–1) Given the negative portrayal of domestic life in the comments of these women, it is clear that they have no desire to ‘return to the home’. As mentioned above, these women adhere to the Soviet model of combining, the model of the worker-mother, and this implies that when they have young children their work must be convenient. Although they do not want to become full-time housewives, they aim to put their families first. The case history of Katya (3–52, b. 1964) is characteristic. She described her outlook on life in the following way: I am not a feminist. I think that the family should always be women’s first priority. I, for example, changed job, I didn’t do the work I was trained for, because I needed a convenient shift system. In order to be with my daughter, I worked in a job which wasn’t the best. But I don’t regret it. I’d do the same thing again if I had to. The main thing, in my opinion, is the welfare of the child, the family. For men, all the same, work is the main thing. It was always like that: for a woman—home, for a man—work. A man should bring in the money, and everything else is up to the woman. Of course, there are women who can’t sit at home, the walls suffocate them, they need company. But my life suits me.


114

Despite her views on the importance of the family, she continued to work, choosing jobs which she could combine with her duties as a wife and mother. Having married early and given birth to a daughter, she left her well-paid and enjoyable job as an enterprise controller, in order to take a more convenient job as a cleaner: After two years [working at a factory] I gave birth. When I went back to work the problems began. Controllers work in shifts—the problem was: with whom to leave the child? I had to put her in a kindergarten. My mother-in-law worked at the same factory in a different shop. She said that they had a place for a cleaner. I didn’t have any choice, I couldn’t go on working as a controller. My daughter was sickly…and our work was such that if I went on sick leave no one would like it, and no one would agree to keep me there. And in that sense being a cleaner was very good. There was no timetable—I could go there at any time and clean the shop. I didn’t depend on anyone. My mother-in-law came home from work and I ran off to work for a maximum of one and a half hours. My daughter was always at home. Then she went to school. A vacancy as a cloakroom attendant turned up in another shop. There you needed to work a 24-hour shift. It’s a very convenient shift system—you work 24 hours, and then you’re at home for three days. (3–52–1) Katya lost this job after the enterprise where she worked closed, and at the beginning of our research she was unemployed. Her husband earned a reasonable wage, and did not want her to return to work, but Katya was only able to endure one month at home. Her return to work was not financially motivated. As she explained: It hasn’t been long that I haven’t been working, but I really want a rest from home. From cooking, from washing. Work, it’s all the same a release [otdushchina], some kind of social life. When I went to work, I came home with some kind of impressions, I missed home. And now it’s all the time: home, home. Although I’m a housewife, I’d like to work. The first job Katya got after her brief spell of unemployment was as a shop assistant. This paid four times as much as her previous job, but required her to work every day and entailed some responsibility. She therefore left to take up a job as a cleaner in a large commercial centre, rejecting other alternatives. In response to a question about why this job suited her she replied: ‘Well, there’s no responsibility, you just turn up and do your work. You work for two days and then you’re at home for two days. It’s a convenient shift system, that really suits me. It’s the only thing I like in that job.’ The next time she changed job it was only to an even more convenient post as a cleaner, which had a more flexible shift system, was nearer to home, and provided some social guarantees. Katya’s story neatly illustrates the claims made above about the priorities and motivation of this group. It also highlights another key feature of such women’s behaviour: their mobility and flexibility (at least in terms of pay and status). Some of the


115

older women in this group, having found a job that suits them, are very keen to remain in it, in order to be with their old friends. As one of them remarked: None of us work for the kopeks that they pay us, but simply because here are the people we’ve grown up with, understand? Our collective—we’ve all known each other 30–40 years. We all came here together as girls, and we’ll leave as pensioners. (1–15–1) Generally, however, this group of women are content, like Katya, to move from job to job in search of the position which best suits their family circumstances, even to the extent of looking for work at the kindergartens attended by their children (for a discussion of the characteristically Soviet ‘kindergarten career move’, see Ashwin, 2002). They thus tend to be quite mobile, something which is facilitated by their flexibility in terms of pay and status. Katya’s story illustrates this, as do the comments of the following kindergarten teacher, who was preparing herself for downward mobility: My daughter will go to school, and it will be necessary to make some radical changes. I’ve got a strong desire to change my job, so that her school fits in with my job, so that my working isn’t at the expense of my daughter… I’d even be a cleaner or something like that, in order to get a different shift system. 19–107. This group thus combines rigid demands in terms of working time, with ultra-flexibility as regards pay and status. They therefore tend to find themselves trapped at the bottom of the occupational hierarchy, working as cleaners, caretakers, door-keepers or dishwashers for very low wages. Having said this, their willingness to do very low-paid work means that they are ideally suited to the conditions of the new Russian labour market, and find it easy to secure employment. Only two of the members of this group were out of work at the end of the study. Both these respondents, Olga (3–16, b. 1947) and Galya (3–21, b. 1945), greatly missed work. Olga was waiting for her pension, but in the meantime tried to keep active in her role as the residents’ representative of her stairwell. Galya had ended up unemployed because her responsibilities as an unpaid carer had prevented her seeking work. During her final interview she reported having her eye on a position as a doorkeeper at a museum, which she hoped would become vacant in the near future. She had tried to replace work with religion, and Eastern philosophy, but neither had filled the hole in her life left by work. From the above it should be clear that those following a convenient work strategy need to be supported by a partner or else risk a life of poverty. As mentioned above, ten of the women in this group ended up earning below their regional subsistence minimum, and not one woman in the group earned more than the average wage for their region at the end of the study. We had anticipated this, and our preliminary hypothesis had been that in the transition era only those supported by successful male breadwinners would continue to pursue such a strategy (Ashwin, 2000). But this expectation was not fulfilled. First, only eleven of the nineteen women in this group were living with husbands or


116

partners. Second, in all but one case, when a woman’s income was below the regional subsistence minimum, the household income per head was also below this level. Overall, only five of the women in this group lived in households where the income per head was above the relevant regional subsistence minimum at the end of our study, and one of these was a young respondent from Ul’yanovsk who was still supported by her parents. The married women in this group can thus in no sense be said to be supported in their work orientation by successful male breadwinners. If the ‘convenient work’ strategies of the respondents considered here were not facilitated by the financial support of other household members, they also cannot be seen as imposed on lone carers facing severe time restraints: only two of the women in this category were single mothers. This ‘combining’ stance in which work is valued for social reasons, but tends to be fitted around family commitments, therefore appears to be adopted by some women regardless of the financial penalties it imposes. This choice, we would therefore argue, is shaped by largely by local norms and is relatively unaffected by the changing economic climate. This has several implications. First, the model of the Soviet superwoman, managing to combine all aspects of life, now tends to entail a life of poverty. Jobs providing time flexibility often pay low wages (as is the case with parttime work in countries such as the UK). Evidence from surveys carried out at different points of time in Taganrog suggest that the ‘short work weeks’ found in many female-dominated jobs did not incur an economic penalty in the Soviet era. Indeed, the monthly wages of women working such hours were almost the same as for women working longer hours. But although ‘usual hours of work’ had hardly any impact on wage equations from the Tagarog data in 1989, they had a considerable impact in 1993–1994 (Katz, 2001:230), and 1998 (Katz, 2003). Thus, ‘convenience’ must now be paid for in reduced wages. Second, though women do tend to earn lower wages than men, the findings presented in this section suggest that their contribution to the household budget is very important. If they accept lower wages, then it has a serious impact on the economic position of the household. Our data would suggest that a substantial minority of women have a social orientation to work, which tends to imply an employment strategy guided by convenience during the years of childrearing. In the West, such women would work part-time. Part-time work was not an option in the Soviet era, however, and is still not widely available. Such women thus choose shift systems which offer de facto part-time status at miserable rates of pay. Their predicament speaks of the need to regularise the legal provisions surrounding part-time work, as a first step towards addressing the poor pay and conditions of such workers.18

Conclusion Our investigation into the interaction between work orientation and gender has aimed to provide a nuanced account of differences in male and female employment behaviour. Analysis of the first round of our interviews had led us to believe that women in general were more flexible than men (Ashwin, 2000). The argument was that while ‘women’s sense of responsibility for the family pushes them to be active, their socialisation and experience of the labour market lead them to regard women’s jobs as automatically inferior’. They consequently display a marked ‘willingness to accept work on


117

unfavourable terms’ (ibid.: 71). Meanwhile, we felt that men gave priority to their public status rather than their role as breadwinners, rendering them far more choosy about the work they would take. Having analysed the full data set, we are now in a position to provide a more precise account of gender differences in motivation and behaviour. First, we found that men and women with a professional orientation to work were quite similar in their level of professional attachment: both were willing to endure poverty in order to remain working in a ‘beloved profession’, both found professional compromise intensely difficult. Women with a professional orientation to work may be slightly more adaptable than their male counterparts, but we found only weak evidence for this proposition. A professional work orientation seems to form part of individual identity, and is therefore not easily sloughed off in the face of economic necessity by either sex. Any gender differences that do exist appear to lie in the constraints men and women face outside work. Women have a position in the household which is not determined by their earning power, while men’s domestic position is more dependent on their role as breadwinners. This gives women more flexibility in determining their response to the declining economic fortunes of their professions. It may also offer them some compensation for professional hardship, which is less available to men. Overall, however, the employment behaviour of men and women with a professional work orientation is shaped by their desire to remain working in their chosen occupations. The responses of this group to the labour market challenges they faced were not uniform, but each of the responses we identified—dogged professional attachment, subsidised professional attachment and compromise—were encountered in both sexes. That is, gender did not appear to dictate the responses of this group. When we turn to look at men and women with an instrumental work orientation who see themselves as breadwinners, our characterisation based on the first round of interviews looks more accurate. Although men in this group were primarily instrumental in their choice of work, they also viewed work as important in determining their status, and placed far greater emphasis on the public standing of their jobs than did their female counterparts. Meanwhile, women breadwinners did display the ultra-flexibility which we had previously argued characterised women in general. They were prepared to accept low-status work, or do jobs they didn’t enjoy ‘just to get money and feed the children’. Men, in contrast, used secondary employment to reconcile their desire for social standing with the need to provide for their families. Women with a social orientation to work were also highly flexible with regard to status and pay, but required convenient work when they had children. These women are inheritors of the Soviet tradition of combining work, motherhood and domestic management. They tend to have a strong attachment to the labour market, but their desire for time flexibility incurs a serious economic penalty in the transition era. We did not encounter any men of this type. This appears to be related to the fact that men rarely face prolonged confinement with the dreaded ‘four walls’ and therefore social interaction does not become a dominant motivation when seeking work. Meanwhile, the men who wanted ‘convenient’ work were either interested in maximising the time available for their secondary employment, or were interested in avoiding work altogether. Women with a social orientation to work see employment as complementing the rest of their lives. The group of young men with an instrumental work orientation who wished above all to avoid work also see employment as a subsidiary rather than a primary life


118

interest. But their main interests—music, literature, the search for meaning, drugs and alcohol—often involve risk and tend to lead them towards social marginality, whereas those of ‘combining’ women generally serve to link them to others (for more details, see Chapter 6). Men for whom work is not a central life interest are therefore at greater social risk than their female equivalents. Whether or not they end up living in poverty largely depends on the extent of support they receive from their families and those in their social networks. In terms of the prospects for change, the ambitious, young respondents are the most interesting. There are few gender differences between young men and women primarily interested in money and between their counterparts with a professional work orientation. The extent to which the long-term employment success of the women matches the men in these groups will mainly depend, ceteris paribus, on the decisions the women make about family life once they hit their thirties, and the extent of discrimination they face. If the ambition of these young women remains undiminished in middle age, they could play a catalytic role in the labour market, easing the path of the women who follow them by challenging the notions regarding the ‘natural’ inferiority of women which are so prevalent in Russia. But, as has been seen, the cultural idea regarding the desirability of women combining several roles persists, despite the changes in the environment which make it harder to live up to this ideal. It is therefore hard to predict how these women will negotiate their personal and work lives in the future. Finally, we return to the question raised in the introduction regarding the extent to which work orientations (or what Hakim calls preferences) determine employment outcomes. We argue that gender differences in outcomes cannot be said to be structured by differences in the work orientations of men and women, except in the case of the minority of women with a social orientation to work. Women with this orientation to work are unlikely to become high earners. Men and women with a professional orientation to work have a great deal in common, and the labour market success of both depends above all on the opportunities available within their professions. Notwithstanding their shared instrumentality in relation to work, there are significant differences between the attitudes of male and female breadwinners. Men’s status in society and the household is determined by their position at work, and for this reason it is less easy for them to compromise in terms of wage levels and job type. Women’s role as breadwinners stems from their centrality to the household, which remains unaffected by wage levels and professional attainment. This allows them to be more flexible when choosing work, since status issues are less salient. In this way, the differences between the employment concerns of male and female breadwinners are structured by the gender division of labour in the household. The interaction of work orientations and gender is thus complex, with work orientation being the dominant influence on behaviour in the case of the professionally-oriented, and gender differences playing a greater role in shaping the behaviour of those with an instrumental attitude to work. The ‘social’ orientation to work is so much a product of gendered experience that it is impossible to disentangle where the priority lies. Understanding the interaction between gender and work orientations thus provides the key to understanding both the similarities and the differences between men and women’s employment behaviour.


119

Notes 1 Hakim makes it clear that the concept of preferences she is using is one derived from economics (1997:1). Economics, in contrast to sociology, has an abstract individual as its starting point. The individuals of economic theory have ‘tastes’ and preferences, but the origin of these is not called into question. 2 These were: ‘yes’, ‘no’, and ‘not sure’, and were entered into our SPSS data set. If respondents elaborated their answers, these were recorded as part of the interview transcripts. 3 Interestingly, we later found exactly the same classification in a recent article examining the work orientations of female returners to work (Doorewaard et al., 2004). Doorewaard, Hendrickx and Vershuren identified a ‘job’ orientation; a ‘money’ orientation, and a ‘people’ orientation, and operationalised them using statements which are compatible with our professional, instrumental and social categories respectively: ‘I work mainly because I like my job’; ‘I work mainly to earn money’; ‘I work mainly because this gives me the opportunity to meet other people’ (ibid.: p. 15). In analysing the results of their national ‘Employment in Britain’ surveys of the early 1990s, Gallie et al. (1998) also divided what they called ‘job preferences’ into three broad categories on the basis of a factor analysis. These categories were again similar to ours. The first concerned ‘intrinsic rewards, involving the ability to use initiative in a job, work that the person likes doing’ and so on; the second was ‘instrumental’ and entailed a concern with ‘good pay…job security, fringe benefits’ and the like, and the third ‘could be labelled a convenience dimension’ stressing ‘the importance of hours of work, the ability to exercise choice over hours, and the lightness of the workload’ (ibid.: 199–200). Although the latter category differs from our ‘social’ orientation to work, as will be seen, those who saw work as a locus of sociability in our sample often combined this with an interest in convenience. 4 Indeed, because organisational environments in Russia tend to be highly bureaucratised and subject to state control, many specialist occupations in Russia have little in common with the Anglo-Saxon notion of the ‘free professions’ (Osinsky and Mueller, 2004:195). 5 This is in line with findings from other research, including the Social Change and Economic Life Initiative (SCELI) survey, which show that women are more likely to have a ‘people’ orientation (Doorewaard et al., 2004:10). 6 Gallie et al. found on the basis of their large-scale national surveys in the UK in the early 1990s that married women were particularly concerned with convenience (1998:201), while women were more likely than men to mention ‘the quality of relationships with supervisors, and friendly relations with colleagues’ as important job characteristics (ibid.: 197). 7 Clarke bases this observation on his analysis of VTsIOM data, an October 1997 supplement to the Labour Force Survey in Kemerovo and Komi and work history and household surveys conducted by ISITO in 1997–1998. 8 VTsIOM has regularly asked people about their work orientation since 1989. In 1989, 25 per cent of those questioned admitted to a purely instrumental attitude to work. This increased to 48 per cent by 1991, reached 57 per cent in mid-1993 and then settled at around 60 per cent (Clarke, 1999:166–167). Greater freedom of expression in the Yel’tsin era may account for some of this, although the financial need experienced by many in this period is likely to have played a significant role. 9 On the gender effects of restructuring see Katz (2001:215–218). Klara Sabirianova’s analysis of the occupational change captured in RLMS data reveals that between 1985 and 1998 there was a ‘strong decline’ in the numbers of engineers and skilled labourers, while the share of managers, entrepreneurs, customer service clerks, salespersons and other service-providing workers in the occupational composition increased (2002:201–202). This seems to reflect an overall shift in employment from goods-producing industries to ‘more market-oriented and service-providing activities’ (ibid.).


120

10 The professional attachment of pilots is a well-recognised phenomenon in Russia. The Soviet-era film ‘Clear Sky’ (Chistoe nebo, 1961, directed by Grigorii Chukhrai) focused on the fate of a pilot, a hero of the Soviet Union, suffering from depression as a result of being deprived of work in his profession. The behaviour of Stanislav and Volodya could almost be said to be a case of life imitating iconic Soviet art. 11 The average wage in Syktyvkar in the year this interview was taken was 3,601 roubles a month, while the subsistence minimum was 1,400. 12 Volodya did, as mentioned above, take a job outside his profession for a brief period, but his subsequent behaviour was characterised above all by a refusal to compromise. Unlike the two respondents in this group, his brief period working outside his profession was terminated by a voluntary transition into unemployment. 13 After five years he will have completed the service necessary to secure early retirement. 14 For a description of this life, see the quotation from this respondent in Chapter 6. 15 This compares with four of the male breadwinners (14 per cent) who said that they would prefer not to work. 16 Only three of them did not have any secondary employment during the research (4–04, 3–26, 3–51), and the last of these could be said to have turned supplementary work into her fulltime job since she was a busy shuttle and market trader. 17 The views of these women are very similar to those found in our earlier research (Ashwin and Bowers, 1997). 18 Regulation is important in determining how far the hourly wages of part-time workers differ from those of full-time workers. For example, in the Netherlands the hourly earnings of parttime and full-time female employees are roughly equal, while in countries such as the UK part-time workers earn significantly less per hour than their full-time counterparts. The ‘vastly superior position of Dutch part-time workers when compared to their British counterparts’ can mainly by explained by the strong legislative protection accorded to parttime workers in the Netherlands (Rubery et al., 1999:230–231).

References Ashwin, S. (2000) ‘Vlyanie sovetskogo gendernogo poryadka na sovremennoe povedenie v sfere zanyatosti’, Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya, 11:63–72. ——(2002) ‘“A woman is everything”: the reproduction of Soviet ideals of womanhood in postcommunist Russia’, in A.Smith, A.Rainnie and A.Swain (eds), Work, Employment and Transition: Restructuring Livelihoods in Post-Communist Eastern Europe, London: Routledge. Ashwin, S. and Lytkina, T. (2004) ‘Men in crisis in Russia: the role of domestic marginalisation’, Gender and Society, 18, 2:189–206. Blackburn, R. and Mann, M. (1979) The Working Class in the Labour Market, London: Macmillan. Clarke, S. (1999) The Formation of a Labour Market in Russia, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. ——(2002) Making Ends Meet in Contemporary Russia: Secondary Employment, Subsidiary Agriculture and Social Networks, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Crompton, R. and Harris, F. (1998) ‘Explaining women’s employment patterns: orientations to work revisited’, British Journal of Sociology, 49, 1:118–136. Doorewaard, H., Hendrickx, J. and Vershuren, P. (2004) ‘Work orientations of female returners’, Work, Employment and Society, 18, 1:7–27. Gallie, D., White, M., Cheng, Y. and Tomlinson, M. (1998) Restructuring the Employment Relationship, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Goldthorpe, J., Lockwood, D., Bechhofer, F. and Platt, J. (1968) The Affluent Worker: Industrial Attitudes and Behaviour, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


121

Hakim, C. (1997) ‘Predicting work-lifestyles in the 21st century: preference theory’, paper presented at the ‘Towards a Gendered Political Economy’ Workshop, University of Sheffield, 17–18 September. ——(1998) ‘Developing a sociology for the twenty-first century: preference theory’, British Journal of Sociology, 49, 1:137–143. ——(2000) Work-Lifestyle Choices in the 21st Century: Preference Theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hill, S. (1976) The Dockers, London: Heinemann. Katz, K. (2001) Gender, Work and Wages in the Soviet Union: A Legacy of Discrimination, Basingstoke: Palgrave. ——(2003) ‘Wages in transition: gender differentials in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia’, (unpublished draft), mimeo. Kharkhordin, O. (1999) The Collective and the Individual in Russia: A Study of Practices, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Kiblitskaya, M. (2000) ‘Russia’s female breadwinners: the changing subjective experience’, in S.Ashwin (ed.) Gender, State and Society in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia, London: Routledge, pp. 55–70. Luksha, O.B. (2003) ‘Sotsiologiya professional’nykh grupp: opredelenie ponyatii’, in V.A.Mansurov (ed.) Professional’nye gruppy intellegentsii, Moscow: Institute Sociology RAN, pp. 61–79. Osinsky, P. and Mueller, C. (2004) ‘Professional commitment of russian provincial specialists’, Work and Occupations, 31, 2:193–224. Proctor, I. and Padfield, M. (1999) ‘Work orientations and women’s work: a critique of Hakim’s theory of the heterogeneity of women’, Gender, Work and Organisation, 6, 3:152–162. Rubery, J., Smith, M. and Fagan, C. (1999) Women’s Employment in Europe: Trends and Prospects, London: Routledge. Sabirianova, K. (2002) ‘The great human capital reallocation: a study of occupational mobility in transitional Russia’, Journal of Comparative Economics, 30: 191–217. VTsIOM (2001) Monitoring obshchestvennogo mneniya: ekonomicheskie i sotsial’nye peremeny, 5, 56 (November–December).

5 Gender differences in employment behaviour in Russia’s new labour market Svetlana Yaroshenko, Elena Omel’chenko, Natal’ya Goncharova and Olga Issoupova

Russian workers are confronted by a chaotic and poorly regulated labour market, in which securing a living wage is a major feat. Many enterprises pay wages well below the subsistence minimum, some still pay wages late,1 while a large number offer appalling and often illegal working conditions. This chapter analyses gender differences in employment strategies formulated in response to this transformed labour market. It divides strategies into those which are achievement-oriented and those which are defensive. Under the former heading we place behaviours such as improving qualifications and changing profession, while under the latter we include the strategies of engaging in supplementary employment and relying on state resources. The chapter looks first at mobility, then skill and qualification enhancement, then supplementary employment, and finally at the use of state resources. In each case, gender differences with regard to the prevalence of the behaviour and the nature of its outcomes are analysed. Our expectation was that men would be more likely to engage in achievementoriented strategies such as job changing, and that their defensiveness would take the form of secondary employment. Meanwhile, women’s high educational level led us to expect that their achievement-oriented strategies would take the form of skill enhancement, while their defensiveness would be expressed in reliance on state resources. These expectations were partly fulfilled, although the level of mobility and dynamism among our female respondents surprised us. But it came as little surprise that, despite the activism of our female sample, they secured lesser rewards than men with comparable behaviour.

Mobility In any account of labour market success focusing on the importance of individual behaviour, mobility is an important variable. In an economy facing severe structural change, standard economic theory would predict that ‘rational’ individuals would move from low productivity work in declining industries (perhaps through unemployment) into higher productivity work in growth areas, encouraged by the higher wages on offer in the latter. Thus, mobility is supposed to be good both for the individual and for the wider economy (because of the overall productivity gain). In such an account, the immobile ‘stickers’ are laggards, who reap low wages as a result of their inability to adapt. How far does this characterisation match the Russian reality? And are there gender differences in

Gender differences in employment behaviour in Russia's new labour market

123

mobility? Our discussion begins by discussing the relative mobility of men and women in our data, and comparing this to findings of larger studies. The gender differences found in our study were not that great. Our most notable finding applied to both men and women: contrary to what theory would predict, mobility per se seemed to have very little impact on labour market outcomes. In the concluding part of the section we use our qualitative data to explain this finding, focusing on the instability and lack of regulation of the Russian labour market during transition. In our sample, rather surprisingly, women turned out to be marginally more mobile than men. This does not correspond with findings from largescale surveys which show that men displayed higher levels of mobility in the Russian labour market than women in the 1990s. Louise Grogan’s analysis of RLMS data in the years 1994–1996 showed that male workers were far more likely to be in new jobs that their female counterparts (2000:40–41). Meanwhile, using the 1998 ISITO household survey, Simon Clarke showed that those most likely to change job after 1991 were those with a stronger position in the labour market. That is, men as opposed to women; younger as opposed to older people; those with higher education rather than those with secondary or technical education. The only exception to this logic was that managers and specialists were more likely to have stayed in the same job, while unskilled and service staff were more likely to have moved (Clarke, 1999:196–197). We think that the mobility of women in our data probably relates to the nature of our sample, and we would in no way contest the general view that men are on average more mobile. Rather, the fact that our sample does contain mobile women allows us to compare the motivations for job mobility among men and women, as well as to examine the effect of such mobility. The mobility of our male and female respondents during the research period is shown in Table 5.1. Since our initial sample was defined by the fact that at the beginning of the research all the respondents faced a labour market transition, for the purposes of this analysis a transition is defined as a movement into a job (from another job or through

Table 5.1 Levels of mobility by gender during research period (column percentages in brackets) Level of mobility

Men

Women

Total

Ultra-mobile (2 or more transitions)

14 (15%)

22 (22%)

36 (19%)

Mobile (1 transition)

21 (23%)

26 (26%)

48 (25%)

Immobile

57 (62%)

51 (52%)

107 (56%)

92 (100%)

99 (100%)

191 (100%)

Total

Table 5.2 The impact of mobility on outcomes (n=175; 82 men, 93 women). Level of mobility


Ultra-mobile

Total

Coping 11

12

Poor 10

Excluded 2

35


124

(2 or more transitions) Among men

6

4

3

1

14

Among women

5

8

7

1

21

Mobile (1 transition)

17

18

9

3

47

Among men

12

7

1

1

21

5

11

8

2

26

Immobile

24

35

28

7

92

Among men

16

20

7

4

47

8

15

21

2

46

Among women

Among women

unemployment or economic inactivity). As can be seen, the behaviour of men and women in our sample was strikingly similar, though women, as already mentioned, were marginally more mobile than men. The outcomes of mobility among men and women in terms of our categorisation are presented in Table 5.2. In this table, those who remained unemployed or inactive throughout the research have been excluded from the ‘Immobile’ group in order to facilitate comparison between those who had a job at some point during the research. Once this has been done, the main message appears to be that mobility per se has very little impact on outcomes, since the proportions of those with an income above the subsistence minimum (in the comfortable or coping categories) is similar at each level of mobility. This, as will be discussed below, coincides with the findings of Clarke (1999) and Grogan (2000) regarding the implications of mobility in the Russian labour market of the 1990s. In our data, mobility seems to make equally little difference to the income levels of men and women, though men on average do consistently better than women with comparable levels of mobility. So, over 70 per cent of ultramobile men ended up with an income above their regional subsistence minimum, as did 90 per cent of mobile men, and 77 per cent of men who did not change job. When we turn to look at women, the similarity in outcomes between women with different levels of mobility is also notable. Of the ultramobile, 62 per cent ended up with an income above their regional subsistence minimum, as did the same percentage of the mobile, and 50 per cent of women who did not change job. Among women, the proportions of those with different levels of mobility earning above their regional average wage were similar (between 24 and 17 per cent, decreasing with lower mobility) while in the case of men, the mobile group did the best (with 57 per cent earning above the average wage for their region, as opposed to 43 per cent of the ultramobile, and a third of the immobile). Overall, therefore, our main finding is that mobility did not appear to influence average outcomes for either sex. In terms of whether men or women improved their income when changing jobs, there are also few significant gender differences. In the mobile category, approximately half of both men and women improved their earnings when changing job, while approximately a quarter of women and a third of men in this category ended up with lower earnings. The remainder stayed at the same level. Meanwhile, in the ultra-mobile category, over half


125

(8/14) of men increased pay when they changed job, as did over 40 per cent of women (9/22). Meanwhile just over a fifth of men (3/14) lost in terms of pay when changing job as did 45 per cent of women (10/22). Ultra-mobile women were thus more likely to lose in terms of pay when making transitions than men in our data, though, given the numbers involved, it is difficult to read much into this finding. Overall, a substantial minority of both men and women made transitions into lower-paid jobs. This coincides with the findings from larger data sets. If we collapse our mobile and ultra-mobile categories, approximately half of those who changed job during the research improved their pay. This is remarkably close to findings from the ISITO 1998 household survey, which show that 55 per cent of respondents making job-to-job transitions improved their pay by so doing (Grogan, 2000:44). Similarly, we found that approximately a quarter of respondents changing job during our study ended up with lower pay, which compares with about 20 per cent for job changes in 1996 in the ISITO survey (ibid.: 44). In terms of using skills, gender differences are again marginal. No strong trend towards either deskilling or upskilling can be perceived in either sex. Rather, the picture for both men and women is mixed, underlining the fact that mobility has very different meanings. In making their transition, very similar proportions of ‘mobile’ men and women needed to improve existing skills (around one-seventh—three men, and four women), with the vast majority of both groups requiring the same, or completely different skills. Around one-seventh of the men (3) and less than a fifth of women (5) required lower skills in their new job. The findings for the ‘ultra mobile’ were similar with less than a fifth (4) of women ending up in a less skilled job, and over a quarter of men doing so. Meanwhile, over a third of men (5) took jobs requiring them to improve their skills, as did nearly two-thirds of women (14). If we collapse our mobile and ultramobile categories, we find that the proportions of men and women enduring deskilling are the same, at approximately one-fifth while approximately one-third improved their qualifications. This is quite close to the finding in the 1998 ISITO household survey, where 25 per cent of individuals changing job in 1996 reported moving to a job requiring a higher skill level (Grogan, 2000:44). Once again, as in the case of pay, there seems to be no consistent tendency for either men or women to move into better jobs. Overall, therefore, our data does not suggest that mobility in Russia plays the positive role in a transforming labour market that would be predicted by economic theory. This supports earlier findings derived from large data sets. Using the 1998 ISITO household survey Clarke found that once age, sex, educational level, branch and current occupational status had been controlled for, the ‘stayers’ who had not changed job since 1991 earned on average 12 per cent more than those who moved (1999:195). Again, however, men benefited more than women: men who remained in the same job through 1991–1998 received on average 15 per cent higher wages than the male ‘movers’, while the differential in the case of women was only a statistically insignificant 4 per cent (ibid.: 196). What could be termed the ‘stability premium’ found by Clarke suggests that many of those who moved were pushed rather than ‘tempted’ into their new jobs. Likewise, Grogan’s analysis of ISITO data led her to conclude that ‘a large fraction of the high levels of worker transitions in Russia appear to be “churning” in the sense that they are of lower skill level and/or lower pay than previous employment’ (2000:171). Returning to our data, we can offer some ideas as to why mobility does not have the expected connotations in transitional Russia. First, in a market that is rapidly changing,


126

the returns to mobility or stability are above all uncertain. Our qualitative data show that in the unstable and unregulated Russian labour market, individuals often lack the information they need to make profitable decisions about changing jobs. This can be shown with regard to both the ‘stayers’ and ‘movers’ in our data. Our Moscow factory sample—the vast majority of whom did not change job during the research—provide a good example of the former group. As studies have shown, in the uncertain climate of transition the fate of large industrial enterprises varies significantly over time, with enterprises on the verge of collapse often climbing back from the brink (see the case studies presented in Clarke 1996). This is precisely what happened to our supposedly ‘failing’ industrial enterprise in Moscow. By stage three of our study, the situation at the enterprise had significantly improved, and at the end of the research, none of the respondents remaining in the factory sample had an income below the subsistence minimum, while over a third found themselves in our ‘comfortable’ category. In this sense, the immobile workers at the factory proved to be entirely rational in their decision to ‘sit it out’ during the difficulties experienced by the enterprise. But given the information available to them at the beginning of the study, at which point the vast majority of them had an income below the subsistence minimum, they could not have predicted this happy outcome. Rather, in general they stayed because they felt they would not find anything better. This scepticism on the part of potential job-seekers appears well founded in the light of our data. The majority of our respondents were looking for work at the lower end of the labour market where they were essentially at the mercy of employers. Many of them experienced false promises with regard to wage and benefit levels, the intensity of the work, and, indeed, the very existence or otherwise of the putative job. This leads to a scepticism regarding the possibility of improvement, as can be seen in the comments of the following respondents (the first of whom was from the Moscow factory): Well, we wanted to improve our material position, it was a private enterprise where they produced dairy products—smetana [sour cream], cheese. And, of course, our line manager tried to talk us out of it: ‘Don’t risk it, stay here’, but we… Well, and so, we presented ourselves there one day: we worked from nine in the morning until nine at night, the whole day on our feet, up to our knees in that swill of smetana we worked—their machines didn’t work and still don’t in that mess there. And after those few days we again took our labour books and decided that that we’d be better off tinkering with metal. (1–47–1f) I’m now not looking for work. Because I’m scared. I’ve worked here a long time, and at a new job they might suddenly make me redundant or something, and now there are no jobs. Just now some lads turned up, they’d left for a different job, and within half a year they were back again. Pavel Klopov left of his own volition, and worked here and there, everywhere. He worked in construction, and they made him redundant, and he again came back to us, he wanted a job, but they didn’t take him.


127

The boss said, ‘I don’t take people on a second time.’ He didn’t take him. Because the job was already taken… So I am scared of losing my place. (4–53–4m) Individuals are fearful of a new job turning out to be what one respondent, describing her own unfortunate experience, called ‘a trap, an ambush’ (4–23–4f). Such stories have an impact beyond the individuals immediately concerned: they are related to friends and coworkers and reverberate through the labour market, spreading a sense of caution. Meanwhile, if the risk of changing job does not pay off, further job search or ‘return mobility’ is required. This helps explain the diversity of experience among the ‘ultramobile’. While a minority of them may be driven by restless ambition, many others are desperately attempting to gain a secure foothold in a changing labour market, their mobility little more than an indication of their vulnerability. These points can be illustrated by the experience of Ivan (3–15, b. 1960), an engineer who had three jobs (not including his secondary employment) during the six months between the first and the second stage of our research. He was offered the first job by a friend of his, a commercial director at a furniture factory in the nearby city of Tol’yatti. He was initially promised a salary of 2,500 roubles a month2 for a post as a foreman. He accepted this, but after a week of work he was called in by the general director who proposed reducing his salary to 1,500, on the grounds that ‘we have got enough of our own unemployed in Tol’yatti’. Ivan considered this wage too low to justify the cost of moving from Samara, and left without even collecting the wages he was owed for the time he had worked. Soon after, he was tipped off about another job by a woman he had met at a sanatorium earlier that summer. It was also for a post as foreman, this time in an electrical enterprise, for a wage of 1,900 a month plus bonuses. He began work, and again encountered problems, this time of a personal nature. The first husband of his female sponsor was production manager at the plant. Ivan felt uncomfortable about what he perceived as the leering slights of this manager, and the fallout from these encounters led to quarrels with his sponsor. Their relationship ended, and he felt obliged to leave the job. Finally, after a gap of about three months, he was offered a job by a male acquaintance as a chief engineer at a garage specialising in taxi repair. He initially refused on the grounds that he knew little about cars, but allowed himself to be persuaded. This job, however, lasted all of two weeks. It turned out that his new boss required Ivan above all to soothe the nerves of creditors, or, as Ivan put it, to ‘lie to people’. Ivan quickly encountered a range of contractors who were owed money, and he felt unable to ‘do a deal with them’ in the way his boss required. The enterprise was in disarray, and the boss disappeared in the face of Ivan’s enquiries regarding the finances. Ivan therefore left the job, and at the time of the interview was still owed wages by his former ‘friend’. Ivan’s rich experience of the Russian labour market during this six-month period illustrates a number of key points. His account of being offered a wage which was then lowered is far from unique in our data. The same is true of his discovery that the third organisation that hired him was on the verge of insolvency and lacked the materials required to perform the job. Another Samara respondent, Sergei (3–02, b. 1946), had a similar experience when he found a job as a foreman in charge of electrical equipment at the district military headquarters through the state employment service, for a wage of 580


128

roubles a month (well below the regional subsistence minimum at that time). He remained in the job only briefly, however, because, as he noted with some surprise, ‘even though it’s military’ (3–02–2), the wages were not paid on time and the organisation was devoid of the equipment he needed to perform his work (including simple lamps). Such semi-derelict enterprises and organisations are an everyday feature of Russia’s economic landscape and it was not the last that Sergei encountered during our study. Returning to Ivan’s story, the final point it highlights is the informality of the Russian labour market. He got all the three jobs discussed through connections, and in not one case was his labour book registered before he left the enterprise. The downside of this was not only the lack of a proper agreement about wages and conditions,3 but also the personal dependence it entailed. This caused him problems on two occasions, and also ruined a friendship (in connection with the job at the Tol’yatti factory). In the case of the electrical enterprise, Ivan’s masculine pride was the main source of difficulty, but nonetheless it illustrates the sensitivities engendered by the subordinate role of client in the hiring relationship. To conclude, Ivan’s odyssey between the first and second stage of our study may be a particularly turbulent example of ‘churning’, but it does illustrate the lack of regulation, uncertainty, poor conditions and low wages that engender such unproductive mobility. Of course, mobility does not always have this character. A substantial proportion of those changing job do manage to improve their wages or skilllevel, and their mobility is voluntary. Our mobile young respondents from Ul’yanovsk, for example, were driven by a desire to improve their situation, and many of them were able to do so. At the same time, however, hanging on to an apparently stable if low-paying job can also pay dividends, as is illustrated by the fate of our Moscow factory sample. Finally, there is no doubt that many of those who are highly mobile are forced into this by the low wages and poor conditions they encounter in Russia’s poorly regulated labour market. This means that mobility per se has no clear implications—more significant are the reasons behind the job change. Mobility considered ‘forced’ by the respondents (because of low wages, the threat of job loss, or poor working conditions) is likely to have different outcomes from that which is freely chosen in the search of improvement. We explored this proposition by looking at the last job change of the ultra-mobile category. Our supposition proved accurate, with a substantial majority of those who considered their mobility to be forced ending up with an income below the subsistence minimum. Meanwhile, only one out of the eighteen respondents who chose to change jobs in search of better conditions ended up with an income below the subsistence minimum. There were no gender differences in the levels of insecurity suggested by these findings. The proportion of ultra-mobile men and women engaged in ‘free’ mobility was 50 per cent in both cases. Meanwhile, a slightly greater proportion of men felt ‘forced’ into changes, though the outcomes for the women in this situation were worse, with only one of them ending up with an income above the subsistence minimum. The remainder made their final job change in the search for convenience. In terms of gender, the only significance difference we found was that women were more likely to end up poor than men with comparable levels of mobility. This would tend to discount men’s greater mobility as part of the explanation for their higher earnings. We also did not find that women suffered more from insecurity than did men. The only potential mobility-related reason for women’s lower earnings lay in the preference of


129

some of them for ‘convenient’ work. As discussed in the previous chapter, women with a ‘social’ orientation to work are often highly mobile, changing jobs in order to find the most ‘convenient’ (in terms of shift system, closeness to home, and so on). When we explored this, we found that eleven of the ‘ultra-mobile’ women considered convenience an important factor when looking for work, and of these seven ended up with an income below the subsistence minimum. That is, a preference for convenient work may serve to depress earnings as a result of the penalty attached to jobs offering flexible shift systems (for more details, see Chapter 4). Convenience is not the main factor governing the employment decisions of the majority of women, however, and therefore provides only a small part of the explanation for male advantage.

Education and skills The acquisition of education and skills is considered together, although their implications differ somewhat. Under the heading of ‘education’ we consider all those who gained new qualifications during the research, and under ‘skills’ all those who changed job while increasing their professional level. These two practices were quite common in our sample: about a quarter of the respondents in the final sample changed profession during the research, and approximately the same proportion improved or maintained their skills. There were not striking gender differences in the propensity to do this, though women were slightly more likely to retain or improve their skills than were men. The numbers and outcomes in terms of our classification are shown in Table 5.3. Skill enhancement Table 5.3 includes all those who made a transition requiring higher skills, even if they eventually returned to their former profession. (It is for this reason that the numbers are slightly higher than those cited in Chapter 3.) As can be seen, a greater proportion of women managed to improve their skills during the research than did men (over a third of the final sample of women, as opposed to a quarter of the male sample). In relative terms, women appear to benefit from these changes even more than do men. Approximately 50 per cent of men and 75 per cent of women whose job change involved the same or higher qualifications said that it brought them higher pay. Among those who did not improve their pay, men stayed at the same level, while the women ended up with lower pay. In absolute terms, however, men did better, with over 70 per cent of the men who changed profession ending up with incomes above their regional subsistence minimum, as opposed to just over half of the women. Do gender differences in approaches to skills add anything to the explanation of men’s advantage in the labour market? In general, we would argue that this is not a significant factor, although we did note the following differences in male and female behaviour. First, women in our sample, especially the young, showed a readiness to take lower-paid, and often lower-status work in order to gain experience which they hoped would serve as a basis for future advancement. The case of respondent 2–10, Zina, who saw starting as a secretary as a route into management, was discussed in the previous chapter and provides


130

Table 5.3 Skill enhancement and new qualifications by gender Individual categorisation Comfortable

Total

Coping

Poor

Excluded

Skill enhancement:

18

18

16

6

58

Among men

11

6

3

2

23

7

12

13

4

36

New qualifications:

17

25

12

2

56

Among men

10

13

3

1

27

7

12

9

1

29

Among women

Among women

a good illustration of this strategy. Men appeared less willing to make these temporary compromises for the sake of future advancement. Second, linked to this, women were more prepared to endure downward mobility in terms of pay, which they sometimes considered necessary either in order to combine their work and family lives or simply in order to remain in work. Third, men often avoided the risk of mobility by supplementing their earnings through secondary employment. This, as discussed in the previous chapter, allowed them to maintain status or professionalism at the same time as discharging their duties as breadwinners. Women thus appear more flexible in terms of pay and status, while men are more flexible in terms of time, being prepared to work longer hours in order maintain income and/or status. These behavioural differences manifested in relation to skills may play some role in explaining men’s higher incomes. But at the same time, discrimination cannot be excluded as a factor. As discussed in Chapter 3, women were often forced into changing profession, as a result of employers’ preferences for male employees. Women’s flexibility in terms of pay cannot therefore be seen merely as resulting from their commitment to their domestic duties, or the perception of themselves as secondary earners. The real disadvantages they face often mean that compromises in terms of wage levels are the price of remaining employed. Additional qualifications The proportions of men and women gaining additional qualifications during our research were equal at just under 30 per cent of each sex. The young were especially keen to gain extra qualifications through, for example, post-graduate work, or a first degree to supplement vocational qualifications. Additional education benefits both men and women: about half the men and half the women who raised their qualifications said that this led to higher pay. The remaining half of the women, however, all suffered a decrease in pay after receiving more education or training, whereas only a quarter of men were in this position. In absolute terms, additional qualifications seem to benefit men more than they do women. Of the men who improved their qualifications, 85 per cent ended up with an income above the subsistence minimum, versus 61 per cent of the women.


131

At the same time, however, qualifications were very important to women’s success. A large majority of women in our comfortable category had higher education (72 per cent), while only 51 per cent of men in this category possessed this advantage. This suggests that, as in other countries, the ‘education lever’ (Crompton and Sanderson, 1990) is very important for women seeking advancement at work. It also highlights the fact that male routes to an above-average income are more diverse. Having said this, however, a similar proportion of men and women in our comfortable category gained additional qualifications during our research: 29 per cent of women in this category versus 24 per cent of men. Education for women was almost a condition of success, whereas for men it was just one possible means to achieve this. Perhaps for this reason, men were more instrumental in their attitudes towards education. In our comfortable category, for example, five of the eight men who gained educational qualifications or further educational qualifications during the research were doing so in pursuit of a particular job which they had either been offered, or hoped to secure. This, for example, was how one young man from Ul’yanovsk explained his decision to study management: ‘Now I’m carefully taking one step at a time. Now I’ve got a plan to work in supplies. Well, look, management, I think, will help me get a job in supplies’ (2–13–3). The five women in the comfortable category who gained additional educational qualifications, meanwhile, did so with less specific goals in mind. Usually they did so because they could not find a suitable job with the qualifications they had. Their chosen course of study was not generally related to a particular job but was rather taken with the aim of improving their overall chances in the labour market. One respondent (4–21) said that she was ‘dreaming of learning about computers’ and spoke of the courses she attended as a ‘wonderful self-education’. None of these five women directly used their newly-acquired qualifications in their work. Ambitious women, however, feel that they need as much education as they can get ‘just in case’. That is, it acts both as a means of career progression, and as an insurance policy.

Secondary employment We employ the same definition of secondary employment as Simon Clarke (2002:12), that is, any form of employment, apart from an individual’s primary occupation, which yields a money income. Secondary, or supplementary, employment ‘does not only refer to the second jobs of those in work, but also the employment of those who consider themselves to be unemployed, on leave, retired or engaged in domestic labour as their primary occupation’ (ibid.: 13). When asking the question about secondary employment we used the Russian term podrabotka (additional or supplementary work). Respondents had a clear understanding of the meaning of this term and, as we expected from our previous research experience, defined it in the same way as Clarke. That is, respondents had in their heads a clear distinction between a ‘proper’, regular job, and the kind of informal activity which usually constitutes podrabotka. This distinction is still applied even when the earnings of the latter exceed those gained in a first job. The proportions of those doing supplementary work in our sample were quite high: 37 per cent of our respondents reported engaging in such work constantly or regularly during the research period, while only 27 per cent reported that they performed no


132

supplementary work during the research. That is, over 70 per cent of our final sample engaged in some kind of additional work during the research period. This is higher than the incidence found in large-scale surveys. The 1998 ISITO Household Survey found that 16.5 per cent of adults had had some kind of additional paid employment in the previous twelve months (Clarke, 2002:24), while Khibovskaya (1996, quoted in Clarke, 2002:23) using VTsIOM data for the whole of the adult population, estimated that around 30 per cent of the Russian population were engaged in some kind of secondary employment at some point during the year. There are three potential reasons why we may have found a far higher incidence of supplementary work among our respondents. First, initially, a high proportion of them were not working, or were on the margins of the labour market, and the incidence of secondary employment is known to be higher among those without a main job. In the ISITO Household Survey 33 per cent of non-working adults had had some kind of additional paid employment during the previous twelve months (ibid.: 24). Second, our question referred to a longer time period, thus potentially boosting the numbers who had engaged in supplementary work ‘rarely’. Third, the experience of the researchers on the 1998 ISITO survey suggests that ‘there is a significant degree of concealment of secondary earnings and employment from researchers’ (ibid.: 95)—for obvious reasons. We may have found higher levels because of the degree of trust built up during a longitudinal study. The question regarding the regularity of secondary employment during the research period was obviously asked at the final stage of the research, by which time the respondents were generally very relaxed with the interviewers. This explanation does seem to have some merit. The first time we asked about supplementary employment only 31 per cent of respondents reported having had any, while at both stages three and four of the research, this proportion stood at over 40 per cent. It seems more likely that this results from increased trust rather than some change in the habits of our respondents. Moreover, we have concrete evidence that our respondents did begin to confide more over time. For example, one of our respondents (3–42), an unemployed philosopher, whose source of income was initially something of a mystery, finally revealed during the third interview that he had a sponsor who paid him 5,000 roubles a month in order to allow him to devote himself to his work on Hegel. Overall, the particular nature of our sample is likely to account for some of the difference from larger surveys, but our findings do also suggest that conventional surveys will tend to underestimate the extent of secondary employment in the population. In both VTsIOM data, and the ISITO Household Survey data, men are much more likely to have occasional secondary employment than are women (ibid.: 75). Men in our sample were also far more likely to have secondary employment than were women. Forty-two men (46 per cent of those who answered the question) did supplementary work constantly or regularly during two years of the research as opposed to twenty-six women (27 per cent). Likewise, the proportion of women never engaging in supplementary work was higher: 39 per cent versus 15 per cent of men. In the case of men constantly or regularly involved in secondary employment, in all but three cases this was combined with a main job—in one case it was combined with full-time education, while in the other two cases it provided the only occupation of the men concerned. Only one of the women engaged in regular supplementary employment did not have a main job. Young men are the group most likely to do supplementary work. Over half the men in our sample under 30 did supplementary work regularly or constantly during the research


133

period, and only 5 per cent never did it. By contrast, only 28 per cent of women in the same age group constantly or regularly did supplementary work during the research period, while one-third did not do it at all. But in our sample, doing supplementary work is not strongly associated with age, with between 40 and 50 per cent of men in all age groups engaging in additional work constantly or regularly, and 25 to 30 per cent of women doing so up to the age of 50. A slightly higher proportion of women over 50–38 per cent—constantly or regularly did supplementary work, but nearly half did none at all. Half of women in the 31–40 age group also never did supplementary work. Why are women less likely to do supplementary work? A possible explanation is that their domestic responsibilities mean that they have no time for this. Certainly this accords with the comments of some of our female respondents: Have you ever thought about supplementary work? No, I haven’t. Ever. I haven’t even got round to thinking about it. (3–06–1) And during that period [of unemployment] did you have any supplementary work? No. No, and I didn’t particularly aspire to it. I didn’t have any time— there were repairs to do at home, this and that. Yes, and in what capacity could I do supplementary work when I didn’t have a main job? Simply in order to consider myself employed? And now [after getting a job] is there any possibility of it? All the same I can’t. I’m busy practically all the time, and secondly, there [at work] I’m financially responsible—there’s always something to worry about. I simply don’t see the need. (3–17–2) But we would argue that lack of time is not the main reason why women are less apt to do supplementary work. A woman’s domestic responsibilities are likely to be at their greatest when she has children of school age or lower at home, but having children or otherwise did not seem to have a dramatic impact on the likelihood of women doing supplementary work in our data. Some 78 per cent of women with children rarely or never did supplementary work, but the same is true of 68 per cent of women with no children. At the same time, however, it should be noted that the vast majority of single mothers in our sample (twelve out of fourteen) rarely or never did supplementary work. The two who constantly did supplementary work had incomes above the subsistence minimum, while nine of the twelve who did not had incomes below the subsistence minimum. Lack of time is likely to provide some explanation in these cases, but we do not think that this adequately explains the behaviour of other women. We argue that time per se does not explain gender differences in attitudes to supplementary work, and instead see these differences as being rooted in local understandings of the gender division of labour. On the basis of our qualitative data we would argue men do supplementary work more frequently because supplementing household income through additional work is perceived to be a masculine duty linked to their role as primary breadwinners.4 Women with partners therefore consider that


134

supplementing the family income is a male obligation, as can be illustrated by the cases of two young Muscovite women. One of them initially did additional work, but after moving to a better-paid job stopped, reporting that ‘I don’t need to do it any more.’ Her husband continued to do extra work, however, because ‘he should be responsible for providing for the family’ (1–55–4f). Her words were echoed by another respondent who explained why her husband took responsibility for bringing in additional income in the following way, ‘It’s a male duty to provide for the family…extra money is always handy’ (1–30–4f). In short, earning extra money is not perceived to be women’s responsibility. Indeed, if anything, it is seen as a deviation from local norms for women to take on additional work. When married women have supplementary employment it is often a source of tension, as it signals that the primary breadwinner is perceived to be failing. For example, the following remark of a Moscow woman clearly revealed her resentment at being forced to take on what she perceived to be a male task: ‘The husband should be responsible [for providing], but if he doesn’t take responsibility, then somebody needs to do it’ (1–8–2). We argue that it is primarily the strength of the male breadwinner norm rather than a lack of time which explains why women are less likely to do supplementary work. That is, they are not hindered by their domestic duties, so much as guided in their behaviour by the social norms underlying the local gender division of labour. For this reason, women tend to engage in supplementary work either on an opportunistic basis— because the woman concerned happens to have access to a lucrative sideline—or as a ‘forced’, emergency measure. Meanwhile, performing supplementary work is considered to be the normal behaviour of a responsible breadwinner. Young unmarried men need to do this in order to build up what they often refer to as the ‘material base’ for family life, while married or cohabiting men are often pushed to do this in order to raise the incomes of their families. The way in which men accept this as their responsibility is well captured in the following quotations from our male respondents: Our little baby was born, and it needed feeding too… Well, in principle before then I also did supplementary work. But, how to put it?… Occasionally. But for all that now I’d say it already works out that I turn up here [at his main job] occasionally rather than [at my supplementary work]. (1–07–1m) I’ve got a car. You come home from work and you ask your wife: ‘How are we doing with money?’ If she says that we’ve got enough money for the time being, then I do things around the house, and if we haven’t got any money, then I go round the town and do supplementary work driving people. You can earn 100–120 roubles in an evening. And so I go about 2–3 times a week. (3–24–4m) As noted in the previous chapter, the advantage of supplementary work for men with responsibilities for providing is that it allows them to increase their earnings while not sacrificing the stability, status or professional satisfaction offered by their primary


135

employment. Finally, the behaviour of divorced or widowed men lends additional credence to the argument that performing supplementary work is linked to men’s role as primary breadwinners. It is notable that in our data divorced or widowed men were slightly less likely to do supplementary work than the never-married or those with partners, over 60 per cent of them rarely or never doing such work during the research period. Not only were men in our sample likely to have secondary employment, it also seemed to have more impact on their income in absolute terms than it did on that of women. That is, supplementary employment seemed to provide a route through which men could raise their income above the subsistence minimum, or enter our ‘comfortable’ category. Just over half the latter group reported that they did supplementary work constantly or regularly during our study, and many of them would not have been ‘comfortable’ had it not been for their additional income. Only one of the men in our comfortable category did not do any supplementary work during the research period. Meanwhile, the efficacy of this employment strategy in raising income is confirmed by the fact that over 70 per cent of the men in our sample who constantly did supplementary work ended up with an income above the average wage for their region. But supplementary work appeared to have far less impact on the position of women. As can be seen in Table 5.4, only two of the twelve women who constantly did supplementary work ended up in our comfortable category.5 In line with this, women with an income above the average wage were far less likely than men to secure this through supplementary work. Only five out of the eighteen women in our comfortable category reported doing supplementary work constantly or regularly. Meanwhile, doing extra work offered women less protection from poverty than it did men. Over a third of the women who combined constant or regular supplementary work with a main job had an income below the subsistence minimum at the end of our research, as opposed to just 12 per cent of men in the same position. There are obvious reasons why this should be the case. We do not have precise data on the time our respondents devoted to secondary employment, but data from VTsIOM (March 1993–May 1998) suggest that men work considerably longer hours in their supplementary employment than do women. Their secondary earnings are therefore about 90 per cent more than those of women (Clarke, 2002:53, 99–100). This accords with our observations of our respondents, although some of our female respondents do, as will be seen, work long hours for very little reward. Meanwhile, the same VTsIOM data also shows that men earn more per hour in their secondary employment than do women: controlling for other variables, men earn about a third as much again as do women (ibid.: 55). We did not find huge differences between men and women in terms of the likelihood of their being paid more for their second job than for their first, or in terms of the extent to which they were able to use their skills in their second jobs. A tiny proportion of men and women had secondary employment which demanded higher skills than in their main job, with around half requiring lower or simply different skills in their additional work. The chief factors explaining the greater impact of secondary employment on men’s income seem to be that men work longer hours, and that the sort of work they do is likely to be better rewarded, as is the case with regard to primary employment. The advantages


136

and disadvantages of the role of secondary employment in men’s and women’s employment strategies are discussed below.

Table 5.4 Intensity of supplementary work and outcomes by gender (n=186; 91 men, 95 women) Intensity of supplementary worn.


Total

Coping Poor

Excluded

Constantly

12

7

7

0

26

Among men

10

2

2

0

14

2

5

5

0

12

11

21

7

3

42

Among men

8

15

3

2

28

Among women

3

6

4

1

14

Rarely

23

19

18

7

67

Among men

16

9

6

4

35

Among women

7

10

12

3

32

Never

7

18

17

9

51

Among men

1

7

2

4

14

Among women

6

11

15

5

37

Among women Regularly

To begin with men: supplementary work clearly serves to raise men’s income and helps to keep the vast majority of those who do it regularly out of poverty. This is in line with findings from the ISITO Household Survey, RLMS and VTsIOM which show that secondary employment makes a significant and sometimes substantial contribution to the household budgets of those who have this source of income (Clarke, 2002:81–84). It also, as was argued in the previous chapter, does so in ways that allow men to avoid changing their main job when this is important to them. But this is not costless. The previous chapter also highlighted the way in which using secondary employment to ‘subsidise’ continued attachment to poorly-paid but valued jobs resulted in intensification of work, leaving the men who did this in a constant state of ‘time-trouble’, and in some cases causing what they saw as a dangerous level of fatigue. Thus, while such men were often engaging in supplementary work in order to remain in their chosen profession, their professionalism was undermined by the amount of time they were forced to spend earning money on the side. Another downside of this from a wider economic perspective is that it may inhibit labour mobility by ‘enabling people to remain in what would otherwise be untenable jobs’ (ibid.: 95). Indeed, secondary employment feeds off unproductive primary employment. Depressed enterprises afflicted by various combinations of short time, administrative leave, low or late pay, and lax discipline both stimulate and facilitate the involvement of their employees in informal secondary employment (Popova, 2002). Our Moscow sample from the academic institutes—whose primary workplaces were in an advanced state of decay—provide confirmation of this:


137

nearly two-thirds of them were constantly or regularly involved in secondary employment during the research, while only 10 per cent of them did no additional work during our study. In terms of skill, the picture is also mixed. First, in line with other findings (Clarke, 2002:58), a very small proportion—around one-sixth—of our respondents reported requiring a higher skill level for their second job than in their first job. The vast majority required the same level of skill, or simply different skills. In this sense, supplementary employment cannot be said generally to act as a bridge to better things. Having said this, it did help some of our younger respondents gain skills which they needed in order to advance their careers. For example, two of our young male law graduates (2–02; 2–44) actively sought opportunities to do supplementary work in their profession in order to develop experience. Another (2–38) used the income he gained from having two jobs in order to save up to go to university, while a fourth (2–12) tried a wide range of second jobs in order to build up experience. All of these four young men ended up in our comfortable category. Those who create their own secondary employment—both men and women—can also occasionally end by establishing viable business ventures (Popova, 2002), though this is relatively rare. Secondary employment therefore has both positive and negative implications, which are well captured in the following case study. The respondent concerned, Georgii (3–50, b. 1960), had been unemployed for two years at the beginning of our study, having been forced to leave his previous job ‘voluntarily’ after he was caught stealing.6 By the second stage he had found a very low-paid job as a caretaker—his wage was approximately 300 roubles—in a kindergarten near his house, where he had worked in the past. He kept this job for the rest of the study, and supplemented his meagre wages with secondary employment, initially working as a loader in the market. This was facilitated by the shift system at the kindergarten which involved working 24 hours, followed by two days off. The jobs of loader and caretaker are both unskilled, low-status jobs, located at the bottom of the male labour market hierarchy (the female equivalents would be cleaning and doorkeeping), yet his supplementary work paid far better than his main job. By the final stage of our research Georgii, who was poorly educated and had problems with alcohol, ended up in our ‘comfortable’ category. This came as a huge surprise to our Samara team, who initially saw it as an error of our categorisation. But because of his secondary employment Georgii was able to earn a good income. By the final stage of the research, he was receiving 800 roubles a month for his main job as caretaker (this wage had risen after the caretakers were asked to combine their job with that of security guards). In addition to this paltry wage (about 70 per cent of the subsistence minimum), he also earned 2,500 roubles from his second job. He had advanced beyond loading, and was now working as an occasional delivery driver for a different trader, a job which involved driving to the depot, loading up with goods, and returning them to the trader at the market. He reported doing five or six deliveries a month, at a maximum seven. He also did whatever other occasional work he was offered. Asked what explained his improved financial position during the research period, he replied: Work, work. I’ve got hands, I’ve got a profession, I’ve got work. People ask me to do something and I don’t refuse. There are things that need doing here and there. Everything I’m offered I take, although the work is


138

one-off. I weld something in a garage, or in a flat, my acquaintances ask me. They come and do a deal: ‘This is the job, this is the pay, does it suit you?’ That is, if I’ve got a day off, or some free time. Usually it takes up a day or two, no longer. We go there, do it, and get the money. If it weren’t for that additional work, then I don’t know what [I’d do]. (3–50–4) But although Georgii’s financial position had improved as a result of his supplementary employment, it involved working very long hours. All his free time, he reported, was taken up with work. A potential resolution to this was to drop his primary employment in favour of his more lucrative supplementary work, but such a move had big drawbacks: My pay [in my first job] is low. If I went to Moscow, rushed about on buses getting goods, brought some clothes back, I’d get 7,000 in about 3– 4 days. But if I did that, there wouldn’t be any sick pay, my labour book wouldn’t be registered, you don’t know what sort of boss you’d end up with. But there is that possibility. (3–50–4) Georgii could not make these lucrative trips to Moscow because his primary employment did not give him the time for this. At first sight, his chosen use of time appears entirely irrational from an economic perspective. But his decision to keep a foot in the formal sector of employment is a common one. Registered primary employment offers social benefits, as well as adding to the record of labour service registered in an individual’s labour book (which contribute to pension entitlements). It is also a means of retaining social status, which is particularly important for men whose secondary employment is less skilled than their first job. Meanwhile a job in the formal sector also acts as an insurance policy against the potential arbitrariness of bosses in the informal sector. Georgii’s story thus highlights the duality of secondary employment. On the one hand, it did allow him to achieve the sort of income it would have been impossible for him to attain in the formal sector. It also afforded him—a man with no education and a chequered employment history—a level of earnings that very few of the women in our study managed to attain. But this involved long hours: in his last interview, asked what his plans were, he said he would like to go and spend a day by the Volga, but he had no time. A full shift to the informal sector offered the only viable means of reducing his hours, but this would have denied him any social protection. This experience of being uncomfortably ‘trapped between two worlds’ is a common one for those engaged in regular secondary employment (Popova, 2002:63–64).7 In Georgii’s case his history of drink problems added to the risk entailed in a shift to the informal sector. Although he seemed to have his drinking under control during the research period, he recorded his last major drinking binge (around the time of our first interview) as the best event during the period of our study. The woman who ran the kindergarten had proved tolerant of his indiscretions in the past (having taken him back three times after conflicts resulting from his drunkenness). She was ‘a good woman’ (3–50–3), who he knew would forgive him, while in the informal sector ‘you don’t know what sort of boss you’d end up with’.


139

Women are less likely to have supplementary employment than men, and when they do it is often an indication that they are facing severe hardship. The problem is that those most in need are usually also those with the least advantages in the labour market, meaning that any secondary employment is unlikely to be lucrative. Lida (4–45, b. 1953) provides a good example of this. Lida was in severe financial difficulty, having separated from her unemployed husband between stages one and two of the research, and had a second job throughout the research. At stage two she had three jobs, while by stage three she was working a double shift as a cleaner in a college, for which she earned 700 roubles (half the regional subsistence minimum at that time). By the fourth stage she had found a slightly more lucrative job as a cleaner in a private organisation, which gave her a monthly income of 1,300 (less than 60 per cent of the regional subsistence minimum). Her secondary employment did little to supplement this meagre income. Asked if she had the opportunity to work extra shifts in her new job she replied: No, at work there isn’t, but, look, I also clean a shop every week. There they rent the premises. I clean it, and they pay me 20 roubles [less than $1 at that time]. That’s while there’s snow—once a week, but then [during the thaw] it will be dirty and so I will have to go twice a week. All the same it’s an income… Sometimes I hand in bottles. There at DOSAAF [her main workplace] they love beer… I then collect the bottles, and hand them in, [to pay] for bread. (4–45–4) This case clearly illustrates the difficulty that women at the lower end of the labour market have in raising their income through secondary employment. Lida only had access to the lowest status and most poorly paid work. If we compare her case to that of Georgii, it is notable that female casual unskilled employment—such as cleaning—is far less lucrative than the male equivalent (loading). Even women with higher skills can find it difficult to secure well-paid additional work, because of the low value accorded to female-dominated professions. This can be seen in the case of the biochemist, Lyuba (1–14, b. 1947). Her academic work paid her a miserable income, well below the subsistence minimum. It was impossible to survive on such a wage and she noted that herself and the director were two of the only people who attended work regularly: Well, you see, we are creative workers, we are used to doing things, and doing them properly, isn’t that right? Well, you can’t do anything properly, well, and the income—what is there to say? I reckon a situation in which the income is 700 roubles and people come to work every day is just something you’re not going to see. It’s a fantasy, pure fantasy. (1–14–3) In addition to her small income, she also earned some money for editing a journal: $650 a year, paid in dollars. She did this work at the end of the day, after finishing her work in the laboratory, and reported that she usually left work around 19.30 or 20.00 in the


140

evening. Editing is, of course, typical ‘women’s work’ which, despite the skill required, is badly paid. Finally, to add insult to injury, she also did a significant amount of copytyping for her boss on an unpaid basis. This was in no way part of her formal responsibilities, but in a situation in which the institute was short of staff who actually turned up to work, she felt unable to refuse this: You see, I’m the only one out of all of them. I type the boss’s reports, that is, everything. Look, now, for the umpteenth time, I put aside my work and go to type some kind of papers, because apart from me no one else can do it. (1–14–3) Thus, despite working long hours Lyuba ended up with an income below the subsistence minimum: not because of a lack of qualifications, nor because of a lack of commitment to work, but because the skills she used in her additional work were typically ‘feminine’, and therefore not valued (even to the extent of being unpaid in the case of her secretarial activities).8 In this sense, the women in the greatest need of supplementing their income through additional work are those least likely to be able to earn significant sums in the secondary labour market. Women in less acute need are unlikely to do extra work except on an opportunistic basis—earning extra income through secondary employment is considered to be the task of the main breadwinner. And this is in many ways rational since it is easier for men to earn money through secondary employment. Even less skilled jobs done by men are better paid. Georgii, for example, was able to earn substantially more than Lyuba, a woman living in the capital city, with higher education and an exemplary work record.

Reliance on state benefits Relying on state benefits in order to survive is also a gendered strategy—in this case, one favoured by women. The key benefits for which our respondents had the chance to register as individuals were: unemployment benefit, invalidity benefit, and early pension. Meanwhile, they could also register their households as poor in accordance with the system described in the introduction. The prevalence of registration among men and women in our sample tells us little, since our initial sample was in part defined by the receipt of certain benefits: in Samara all the respondents were registered unemployed at the beginning of the research, while in Syktyvkar the respondents were registered poor. What our data can provide is an account of the practices of men and women using state benefits, and how these appear to be changing. The registered poor of the 1990s are a more heterogeneous group than the Soviet poor. Added to the ‘traditional’ Soviet poor, which consisted of disabled, pensioners, single parent families and large families, are new groups: the unemployed and those paid below subsistence wages. Neither of the latter categories existed in Soviet Russia. National statistics show that women have a greater propensity to use state benefits than do men. Levels of male and female unemployment as measured by the Labour Force


141

Survey have been roughly equal since the Survey was introduced in 1992. At the same time, a greater proportion of women has always been registered as unemployed (Goskomstat, 2003:130).9 Households rather than individuals have to register as poor, but nonetheless, one member of the household has to take responsibility for completing and collecting the numerous documents required to obtain this means-tested benefit. In Komi republic, where our sample of the registered poor was drawn, 90 per cent of the households were registered by women (Yaroshenko, 2001). Women dominate not only among the claimants, but also among all working-age members of the families which are registered as poor. Approximately half of all the households registered as poor were women-headed households, most often those of single mothers. Meanwhile, only 2 per cent were households consisting of single fathers and their children. There are various reasons why women tend to use state resources more frequently. In the Soviet era, the workplace was the centre of distribution of social goods (housing, childcare, leisure facilities, etc.). The main working-age recipients of state support not linked to work were women in their capacity as mothers. Motherhood was a ‘duty to the state’ (Issoupova, 2000) in the Soviet era in return for which women received support from the state: generous maternity leave (in the late Soviet era); support for single mothers. In this sense, women were used to relying on state benefits. Now changes in the law mean that men have acquired new rights as fathers, so that women are no longer privileged as the only legitimate carers for children. Federal Law number 81 ‘On State Benefits for Citizens with Children’, passed on 19 May 1995, gave men the right to take parental leave in place of mothers. Meanwhile, the shift from category-based to meanstested benefits also opens up benefits to men. Nonetheless, such legal and institutional changes take time to influence behaviour. This is partly because the strong association of state support with women means that many men find it humiliating to apply to state institutions for support. This is not helped by the behaviour of the staff of these institutions (often women), many of whom still behave in the imperious manner adopted by officials in the Soviet era. Moreover, while it is seen as normal for women to apply for state support, men who do so immediately come under suspicion of fecklessness or worse. As one of our respondents, a hard-working and devoted single father, explained: Look, recently, I went to the [social] services specially, to see if I could get help to get a voucher for a summer camp for Vanka [his son]. Not far from here there’s a camp, like a pioneer camp, he went there last year, he liked it, and, yeah, I also need some kind of rest. So I went there, and she sends a commission to look at how we live. And would you believe it, they all think that a man can’t keep a house properly, that I want to get rid of him or something. They asked me there, before they’d come to have a look for themselves: do you have any furniture? I didn’t even understand, how could I not have it?! And then I understood. They probably thought that I’d sold the furniture to pay for drink, or just sold it. But it doesn’t matter to me what they think. I know my rights, and I have to use them. You see I honestly fulfil my duties as a father. (4–14–4)


142

This respondent was driven by his sense of responsibility for his child and was persistent enough to secure his rights, but his account of his interaction with social services shows the barriers that men face in applying for state help. In doing so they are likely to encounter female officials, many of whom will be disposed to think of them as ‘undeserving’, whatever the reality of their situation. Women, meanwhile, are often portrayed as the primary victims of reform, and their neediness is generally seen as legitimate, especially when they are mothers. This means there are fewer disincentives to their applying for benefits. In addition, their role as household managers means that they are more likely to apply for household-based benefits. Just as women are in charge of economising, exchange of non-monetary goods, and other household-based survival strategies, so they tend to be in charge of securing state benefits from the household. It is seen as a woman’s role both by members of the household and by those who staff the state services. This can be seen in the following account for one of our female respondents who reported that her husband was on administrative vacation from his job ‘first eleven months, then five months, then three months. That leave is paid at just 160 roubles a month’ (3–06–1). During this period she was in full-time education, and it was ‘impossible’ to live on the wages of her husband. The couple therefore registered as poor, but despite the fact that her husband had more free time, she made the application. In line with this, when men did register their households as poor, it was often because they had connections which gave them entrée to social services. This reduced the difficulty of registration, as can be seen in the accounts of two of our male respondents: I applied myself [for housing benefit]. I’ve got acquaintances there, so it didn’t take much time, and the help is significant. I’ve been getting it for about two years, constantly. (4–33–3) As soon as the baby was born—at the end of 1997 [I registered as poor]. I filled out all the documents myself. I sort of worked in the social services, in social security. It was a period in 1994, about four months. I took medicine and food to people’s houses. So I knew what it was and how to fill it in. I collected all the certificates. And we got help while the family stayed together. (4–32–3) These accounts—with the emphasis the men place on the fact that they filled out the documents themselves—only serve to underline that this is usually a task undertaken by women. Having said this, our data suggest that it is gradually becoming more acceptable for men to apply for state help. Men at the margins of the labour market appear to be realising that state support can help supplement their income, and that in some cases it is more advantageous for them to withdraw from the labour market when there is that possibility. As one such man, who like the respondents above emphasised that registration was his initiative, explained:


143

How did I know [that you could get help]?… Well, also because of rumours, although I didn’t think it was possible. And then I somehow turned up, to a separate office, well there all those blank forms are on the walls. I read and read, the subsistence minimum, worked out my own, and thought, well I might actually qualify. I also collected what you need, went there, and they significantly reduced my rent. (4–34–4) In this way, through ‘rumours’ men are beginning to realise what they are entitled to, and the gender norms surrounding dependence on the state are changing. The following case studies aim to explore gender differences with regard to state support in more detail. The case of Tanya (4–27, b. 1968) reveals the way in which women’s strategies with regard to state help represent a continuation of their Soviet-era practice. Tanya is a single mother of two sons, who has been once widowed and once divorced. At the time of the final interview her most recent partner had moved back in with her after a separation caused by his drinking. Tanya’s lack of education, skills and connections meant that she was not well placed to support herself through work, so his financial help was welcome. At the same time, Tanya did not want to marry him, and was realistic enough, given his history of drinking, not to rely on his help being permanent. She therefore, like generations of women before her (Kiblitskaya, 2000), chose to rely on the state in preference to male partner. At the time of her last interview she had determined a strategy. She was on sick leave from her job hospital orderly with severe psoriasis, which was exacerbated by cleaning products containing chlorine. Redundancies were awaited at her workplace, and she was trying to stay on sick leave until they happened, so that she would be among those laid off. In the meantime, she was trying to be certified an invalid, so that when she finally registered at the Employment Service, the officers there would only be able to offer her the lightest kinds of work—her ideal was to work as a doorkeeper or in another kind of ‘sedentary work…without chemicals and heavy lifting’ (4–27–4), while having her income supplemented by benefits. As she explained: Now I’ve got to go for treatment again… I’ve got to rest for three to four months, so that they certify me as an invalid. I can’t work with chlorine. But what’s the alternative?… But if things carry on as they are, then I’ll try to get myself declared an invalid. At least I’ll get more of everything [benefits], even if I can’t find well-paid work. And so now I’ve set myself the goal of getting invalidity. And is it possible? It’s not just possible, I should have done it long ago. (4–27–4) This drastic strategy essentially meant that Tanya was giving up on paid work as a means of improving her situation, a position which is more common among older women. Nonetheless, a minority of young women also follow this route, considering it to be a legitimate option among a limited range of choices. In Tanya’s case, her strategy cannot be seen as something new, born of the desperation of the transition era. Her behaviour in the Soviet era was characterised by the same canny use of state resources. Most notably,


144

Tanya at one point found herself pregnant and without a job. She therefore took a job at the only organisation that would hire her without a medical. Having got the job, she almost immediately went on maternity leave for three years, and then left it as soon as her maternity leave was over. This secured her some financial support and added three years to her length of service, without her doing any work for the organisation concerned. Tanya’s case clearly illustrates one of the reasons why women were the first to take advantage of the welfare available in post-Soviet Russia—they had past experience of using state social provision to their advantage. Men generally prefer to resolve their financial problems through work—as was noted above, supplementing their income through secondary employment is a common strategy. But two alternatives to this can be noted—one is to withdraw from the labour market altogether and rely on whatever benefits can be gained. The other is to supplement benefits with informal employment. The possibility of following either of these courses obviously depends on whether the man concerned is eligible for benefit, disability benefit being the most common source of support. Andrei (4–26, b. 1972), for example, was suffering from tuberculosis contracted during military service. This meant he was entitled to disability benefit which he supplemented with informal work decorating flats. His invalidity benefit stood at 360 roubles a month at the time of the first interview, while he earned 600 roubles a month on top of this. By the time of last interview his income from decorating was significantly above the regional average wage, while he received various subsidies on top of his pension including free school meals for his children, reduced electricity bills and subsidised rent, which meant that ‘we pay virtually nothing for the flat’. Andrei appeared fully satisfied with this situation. His TB seemed to be under control (he only revealed the nature of his disability during the final interview with the preface ‘Shall I say? You won’t be frightened?’) Prior to that, the interviewer had been unable to discern why he was eligible for benefit. At the same time, Andrei reported working every day without weekends, and acknowledged that this left him tired. This work regime thus did little to improve his prognosis, and called into question the sustainability of his survival strategy. He predicted, however, that within a year he would be considered cured and his pension would be removed. According to Andrei at this point his alternatives would be to combine casual work with registered unemployment and benefits or to find a low-paid job involving fewer hours in the formal sector, which in any case would be difficult to get because of medical record. His preference was continue working informally with the support of either a disability pension or other benefits. Vyacheslav (4–48, b. 1964) pursued a similar strategy. His wife had died eighteen months before the research began, which, since she had been in work, had allowed Vyacheslav to apply for a pension ‘for the loss of a breadwinner’. He was entitled to this on the basis that he was not in formal employment, and that he had a child under the age of 14. This pension provided him with a basic and stable income, which he was able to supplement with casual work (such as work in the market and decorating). Since taking a formal job would mean losing his benefit, he stated that he would only ‘dirty’ his labour book for 3,000–4,000 roubles a month, around the level of the regional average wage at the time of the interview (4–48–2). He did not consider finding such a job possible and took no active steps to search for one. So, like Andrei, Vyacheslav had found a way of maintaining his income above the level of the subsistence minimum, but his strategy had disadvantages. First, it provided no structure, and allowed his life to slip into chaos. He


145

claimed that when he had a regular job ‘I don’t even want to drink…or smoke’, but his lifestyle on benefit allowed him a great deal of freedom to drink, which he did regularly and in large quantities. He also reported feeling lonely. Finally, the social stigma attached to his status as a jobless man troubled him. He said that he felt ‘ashamed’ when he received calls from the pension fund enquiring whether he had found a job: ‘they think that I live on those 500 roubles’ (his pension at the time of the second interview was 560 roubles). Thus, while men at the lower end of the market may find the stability of benefits preferable to the risk of taking a low-paid and insecure job in the formal sector, this strategy often has negative consequences (be they overwork, as in the case of Andrei, or demoralisation as in the case of Vyacheslav). In particular, it was common for men who supplemented benefits with casual employment to have alcohol problems. The causality is difficult to disentangle here since an exit into the informal sector may be necessitated by a drink habit that prevents wellpaid employment in the formal sector (as Georgii’s case from the previous section illustrates, poorly paying employers are perforce more tolerant of drinking), while at the same time, the autonomy provided by a life of casual employment constitutes a risk in an environment in which heavy drinking is endemic. Certainly, the casually employed men in our Syktyvkar sample often excluded the possibility of obtaining a job at one of the high-paying enterprises in the city, because they were worried about the prospect of sullying their labour books with a dismissal for drunkenness. Such fears highlight the danger of social marginalisation faced by such men. As discussed in Chapter 2, these are intensified when the men concerned are single. Women, as discussed above, also risk confining themselves to the lower reaches of the labour market through benefit-centred survival strategies, although in many cases their doubts regarding the prospect of their securing decently-paid employment are probably justified. This particularly applies to older women, for whom, in the light of widespread age discrimination (Zhidkova, 2001), securing an early pension often offers the best chance of improved living standards.10 As discussed in Chapters 6 and 7, however, women at the margins of the labour market are at less risk of demoralisation and alcoholism than are men in the same position. Thus, while their economic prospects are equally poor, the physical and mental health of women appears less likely to be damaged by a partial or full withdrawal from the labour market. In the case of both men and women, the strategy of combining benefits with informal work reflects poor job prospects in the formal sector. Increases in the number of those taking early retirement and receiving disability benefits also occurred in Western Europe in the face of economic downturn at the end of the 1970s (Yeandle, 2003), so it is not surprising that this trend is apparent in Russia where the economic situation is altogether more bleak. Although seeking disability benefits or early retirement confines individuals to informal employment, this strategy offers many of those with disadvantages in the labour market (such as low skills and poor health) a level of income and security which they could not secure through formal employment. At the same time, it carries social risks arising both from the character of informal work, and the lifestyle associated with it.


146

Conclusion The activism of women in our sample matched that of men in everything but the intensity with which they performed supplementary work. They were as mobile as men, as prepared to retrain, gain additional qualifications and change profession as men. Despite this, in absolute terms men’s activism brought greater rewards. In addition, men had a greater range of potentially successful routes to a ‘comfortable’ income than did women. For men both ‘defensive’ and ‘achievement-orientated’ strategies could pay off. Combining unskilled supplementary work with unskilled primary employment placed Georgii in our comfortable category, while combining invalidity benefit with semi-skilled informal work did the same for Andrei. By contrast, it was very difficult for women to attain a ‘comfortable’ income without possessing higher education. Men and women exhibit different kinds of flexibility, which are structured by the prevailing gender order. Men are highly flexible in terms of time, and are prepared to work incredibly long hours in order to secure what they perceive as to be a decent income. This may well be detrimental to their long-term health—as Andrei’s cavalier approach to his period of state-supported convalescence from TB illustrates. In other cases, such as those of the academics discussed in the previous chapter, reliance on supplementary employment may also lead to an erosion of core skills. So while the financial benefits of men’s time flexibility are undeniable, it also entails dangers. These risks in many cases stem from men’s lack of flexibility with regard to status— as was discussed in the previous chapter, the strategy of subsidising a poorly-paying primary job is often motivated by status concerns, as well as by professional attachment. This chapter has also shown that men’s preference for multiple sources of income can sometimes reflect a lack of self-command. Men such as Georgii and Vyacheslav do not trust themselves to focus on one well-paid job in either the formal or the informal sector since they are scared of being sacked for disciplinary offences related to drinking. They thus pursue an ‘extensive’ approach in order to limit the risk of dismissal, but thereby incur other social risks. Women are far more ready to compromise their status than men, and will endure downward mobility where necessary either for survival or long-term advancement. Their main rigidity lies in the preference of a minority of them for convenient work, but most women are characterised by their flexibility. In addition, their appreciation of the challenges that face them make them very open to gaining additional qualifications. For reasons rooted in the domestic division of labour, women are less likely to resort to supplementary employment than men. In any case, it is harder for women to secure a high income through supplementary work: those that do have secondary employment do not derive the same economic benefit from it as men. It is therefore not surprising that women pushed into defensive strategies are more likely to rely on state resources. Women’s labour market activism was thus mainly characterised by behaviour we would label ‘achievement-oriented’, but they often gained little to show for this. We would argue, in line with the findings of Chapter 3, that this results from taken-forgranted norms which lead work done by women to be socially undervalued. There is no doubt that it is harder on average for women to gain a ‘comfortable’ income.


147

Whatever the differences between them, both men and women face a labour market containing a surfeit of poorly-paid and unproductive jobs. Their strategies for dealing with this varied—women struggled to gain or maintain a foothold in the formal sector through various means or resorted to benefits, while men tried to offset the deficiencies of the jobs available through seeking income elsewhere, be it in the informal sector or from benefits. But however they dealt with the challenges of Russia’s unpredictable and under-regulated labour market, neither the men nor the women in our study had any choice but to ‘run to stand still’.

Notes 1 Although the non-payment crisis reached its peak in 1998, wage delays still occur particularly in the ‘budget’ sector. Whether or not employers were paying on time was still an important consideration for our respondents when looking for work. 2 This was just above the average wage for Samara Oblast’ at the time of the interview. 3 Our respondents were often offered illegal terms and conditions. Sergei’s labour history again provides an example of this. He initially tried to combine the low-paid job as foreman mentioned above with a second job as a caretaker in a small private enterprise paying 450 roubles a month. This job had an illegal shift system (24 hours followed by two, rather than the requisite three, days of!) which the managers of the enterprise were not prepared to negotiate. He left this job at the same time he left the military headquarters—mainly because of the exhaustion of trying to combine the two. 4 The ISITO work history interviews in 1997 also revealed that women generally considered that men should be the first ‘to rush to the barricades’ in times of financial need (Clarke, 2002:76). 5 One of these (2–47) did extra work as a designer, while the other (1–30), an academic, supplemented her formal income with work on a grant-funded research project. 6 Stealing was not recorded as the reason for dismissal in his labour book, because the management knew that this was not an individual transgression but rather part of an endemic system of thievery at the plant. 7 This is not only a matter of the time involved in having two or more jobs, but also the psychological strain involved in occupying very different positions. As one of the respondents cited by Irina Popova put it, ‘It’s simply idiotic—[being both] a porter and an academic’ (2002:64). 8 On the basis of our data, Olga Issoupova has shown that women are more likely than men to do unpaid work either at their main workplace or elsewhere (Issoupova, 2002). This work cannot be seen as ‘secondary employment’, but it indicates the degree to which work done by women is undervalued. It also, of course, highlights the extent to which women undervalue themselves. 9 In 2002 the female registered unemployment rate stood at 2.6 per cent, as opposed to 1.1 per cent for men (Goskomstat, 2003:130). 10 In line with other benefits, a slightly greater proportion of women receive early pensions. In 1999, early-retired women (under 55) constituted 4.1 per cent of all pensioners, while the corresponding figure for early-retired men (under 60) was 3.8 per cent. In 2001, the proportion of early-retired women among pensioners had grown to 4.6 per cent, while that of early-retired men had fallen to 3.2 per cent (Goskomstat, 2002).


148

References Clarke, S. (ed.) (1996) The Russian Industrial Enterprise in Transition: Case Studies, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. ——(1999) The Formation of a Labour Market in Russia, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. ——(2002) Making Ends Meet in Contemporary Russia: Secondary Employment, Subsidiary Agriculture and Social Networks, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Crompton, R. and Sanderson, K. (1990) Gendered Jobs and Social Change, London: Unwin Hyman. Goskomstat (2002) Rossiiskii statisticheskii ezhegodnik, Moscow: Goskomstat Rossii. ——(2003) Rossiiskii statisticheskii ezhegodnik, Moscow: Goskomstat Rossii. Grogan, L. (2000) Labour Market Transitions in Eastern and Western Europe (Tinbergen Institute Research Series), Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam. Issoupova, O. (2000) ‘From duty to pleasure? Motherhood in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia’, in S.Ashwin (ed.) Gender, State and Society in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia, London: Routledge, pp. 30–54. ——(2002) ‘Nedostatochno oplachivaemaya rabota: Pochemu my soglashaemsya?’, Sotsiologikeskie issledovaniya, 3:62–71. Kiblitskaya, M. (2000) ‘Russia’s female breadwinners: the changing subjective experience’, in S.Ashwin (ed.) Gender, State and Society in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia, London: Routledge, pp. 55–70. Popova, I. (2002) ‘“Vytesnyayushchaya” vtorichnaya zanyatost’ (spetsialisty depressivnykh predpriyatii)’, Sotsiologikeskie issledovaniya, 10:57–66. Yaroshenko, S. (2001) ‘Gendernye razlichiya strategii zanyatosti rabotayushchikh bednykh v Rossii’, Rubezh, 16–17:25–49. Yeandle, S. (2003) ‘The international context’, in P.Alcock, C.Beatty, S.Fothergill and S.Yeandle (eds) Work to Welfare: How Men Become Detached from the Labour Market, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zhidkova, E. (2001) ‘Bezrabotnyi, “ne podkhodyashchii po voszrasty”’, Rubezh, 16–17:66–86.

6 Who benefits from networks? Irina Tartakovskaya and Sarah Ashwin Of course, it’s better [to get a job] through your friends… That way you can get a good job, where they pay more, where it’s more comfortable. (2–27–4f) The way it usually works is this: either you call your friends [to your workplace] or they call you, and that’s it. All the same, there’s some kind of collective guarantee— that’s not going to change for a long time in our society… It’s a Russian peculiarity [rossiskaya spetsifika]. At least, in Russia it’s more developed than in other countries. (2–11–1m)

In Russia getting work through connections (po blatu, po znakomstvu, cherez sviazy) is seen as a normal and natural route to success. Those who feel they lack the necessary contacts tend to view this negatively as the source of their exclusion (until a friend finds them a job), while those with friends in the right places talk of this with pride as a crucial resource akin to a university degree or professional qualification. This view is found among both men and women and across the social hierarchy. As the above quotations from Ul’yanovsk respondents reveal, even our young specialists—who are the group most likely to break away from Soviet ways—accept the importance of contacts in getting work. This chapter examines the importance of connections in the labour market success of our respondents. It first develops an argument regarding the overall significance of networks, before examining gender differences in the use and form of networks, to see what, if anything, these contribute to explaining male advantage in the labour market. Our overall argument is that the functioning of networks generally serves to reproduce existing social advantage, so that, for example, gender differences in networks tend to reinforce men’s superior position in the labour market. The chapter also examines the implications of gender differences in the form and use of networks for the overall well-being of our respondents. Here our conclusion is rather different. Women seem to derive more support from their networks than men. This support, though it may not have a dramatic impact on their fortunes in the labour market, may serve to protect women from damaging demoralisation. The arguments in this chapter are based on a two-stage coding of all the interviews in our study. The network codes used in the initial coding of the interviews were: ‘help received from women’ and ‘help received from men’, which included all forms of help


150

(with job search, financial or material support, help with domestic work, and so on). In the next stage these codes were further sub-divided into all the different categories of help and the nature of the tie. In our analysis of the coded material we focused on gender, generational and social differences such as education levels. Although we recognise that ethnicity can be an important factor in structuring networks in the post-Soviet context (Nazpary, 2002), we do not deal with this aspect because our sample was drawn from four large Russian cities with predominantly Russian populations, and correspondingly the vast majority of our respondents were ethnic Russians.

The role of networks in labour market success It is widely accepted that networks are a crucial resource in contemporary Russia (Ledeneva, 1998; Rose, 1998; Lonkila, 1999; Clarke, 2002). In the non-monetary shortage economy of the Soviet era, the creation of informal relations of mutual obligation—blat—was vital to secure access to the most basic items (Ashwin, 1996). Although it is now possible to buy most things on the open market, one item in short supply is good jobs, and the role of connections in securing work has increased significantly during the transition era (Clarke, 2000; Yakubovich and Kozina, 2000). It is now estimated that approximately two-thirds (Clarke, 2000) to 72 per cent of jobs (Yakubovich and Kozina, 2000) are obtained using contacts. Yakubovich and Kozina argue that the scarcity of jobs during transition creates a rationing situation in which hiring is more likely to be treated as a favour, and that the weak regulatory environment of post-communism facilitates this. Clarke takes the argument one step further, averring that what is occurring is a ‘“feudalization” of Russian management, with the primary concern in hiring being to secure the personal loyalty of the employee to the manager who has the power to appoint’ (2000:499). Our data provide little new insight into questions concerning the extent and significance of the use of contacts in hiring, and only confirm their continued importance. Rather, we are interested in how the use of networks influences the labour market success of our respondents. In analysing this, our starting point was the argument developed by Simon Clarke in his work on ‘The closure of the Russian labour market’ (2000). In building his explanation for this ‘closure’, Clarke notes that the dispersion of wages within local labour markets is substantially greater than between local labour markets, and that differentials within occupations are greater than those between occupations. Given that the scale of these differentials is much greater than could be accounted for by any economic ‘efficiency wage’, Clarke argues that the differentials reflect the discretionary power of Russian management, who, in prosperous enterprises, pay high wages in order to seal the personal loyalty of those hired. Thus, a main dimension of labour market segmentation in Russia is between those working in prosperous and failing enterprises, regardless of their qualifications, skills and other personal characteristics. This is reflected in the fact that a standard Mincerian quadratic regression, using only human capital variables, has been found to explain only 4 per cent of wage variation in Russia (Grogan, 2000:108), far lower than found for comparable specifications for Western European countries or the USA (see also Fan et al.’s (1999:619–620) summary of the evidence which confirms the weak link between education and earnings in Russia).

Who benefits from networks?

151

Clarke argues that this labour market segmentation is structured by social networks which determine who is hired to the most prosperous enterprises. Such segmentation may therefore ‘cross-cut or…may reinforce traditional forms of segmentation rooted in discrimination on the basis of gender, age or ethnicity’ (2000:500). While segmentation structured by networks may work against the poorly connected such as migrants, Clarke contends that it ‘may increase the opportunities of those, such as women, who would otherwise be excluded from employment by discrimination’ (ibid.: 501). Picking up on this intriguing proposition, in the following two sections we look at whether social networks serve to crosscut or reinforce traditional forms of labour market segmentation. We begin by looking generally at the role of networks in the labour market success of our respondents, before focusing specifically on the role of gender. We do not have full network maps of our respondents, but have instead relied on coding all the incidences of help they received with job search. In the light of this, and the nature of our data, some of our arguments must remain at the level of hypotheses. Nevertheless, our analysis of the impact of network support on the fortunes of our respondents during our research does provide a preliminary answer to the question posed by Clarke. The argument we derive from our data is that what is important for labour market success is the quality of contacts possessed by an individual, measured not in terms of readiness to provide help, but in terms of ability to do so. Our poor and excluded respondents were generally not socially isolated, but rather had contacts who were unable to provide the sort of help required to improve significantly their position in the labour market. We expected to find evidence that networks had the cross-cutting effect proposed by Clarke. But although we cannot exclude that networks have some marginal influence of this sort, we could not find any significant examples of this. That is, we could not find any transformations in the fortunes of our respondents which could be explained by the way network resources cancelled out other social disadvantages. We did encounter some cases which appeared to fit this pattern, but once we probed deeper, some other form of social advantage always underlay these apparent rags-to-riches stories. We hypothesise that the failure of networks to subvert social stratification along other lines results from the fact that the characteristics of individuals—sex, age, education, social status—tend to be replicated in their social networks. This reflects the fact that the opportunities individuals have to meet others are structured by their social standing, so that they are more likely to meet those whose daily lives and backgrounds are similar to their own. Thus, the excluded tend to have contacts who are similarly disadvantaged, while those in a better position (in terms of education and other social characteristics) are more likely to have useful contacts. We therefore argue that rather than cross-cutting traditional forms of segmentation, the functioning of networks tends to reinforce the biblical maxim ‘to all those who have, more will be given’. This proposition finds empirical support in other studies. Anna-Maria Salmi (2003a) notes that there are objective reasons why networks in the Soviet era might have been expected to be socially quite diverse. First, in a shortage economy, people need to seek out contacts with a wide range of people in order to secure access to the goods and services they require. Second, the Soviet authorities deliberately tried to create socially mixed neighbourhoods. If these features of Soviet society did lead to socially mixed networks, this diversity might have been expected to persist in the transition era. But Salmi found that the teachers’ networks she studied in St Petersburg in the 1990s were


152

notably homogeneous in terms of class (ibid.: 162). She also found in a study of medical exchange (2003b) that teachers were in a good position to receive medical services as part of an on-going exchange because they inhabited the same ‘middle class’, educated social milieu as doctors—quite simply, they had plentiful opportunities to initiate such exchange. Moreover, even when their ties with medical workers were mediated, this mediation took place within the ranks of the middle class (ibid.: 115–116). Simon Clarke’s analysis of the role of private transfers using the 1998 ISITO household survey also provides strong indirect evidence regarding the social similarity of networks. More than half the total help given to all households in this survey ended up in the hands of the richest 20 per cent of households (Clarke, 2002:193). The top income decile both gives and receives substantially more help than all others (ibid: 196), so that there ‘is only a small tendency for resources to flow from richer to poorer households’ (ibid.: 206). Although the data set in question (like our own) does not provide systematic information on the social characteristics of the donors, Clarke’s findings do suggest that the better-off are generally connected with one another rather than with the poor. Private transfers are most likely to occur between individuals who have strong ties with one another (though this is not exclusively the case, as some of our examples below reveal). It might be expected that the ‘weak ties’ most important for finding a job (Granovetter, 1974) would have more chance of being socially diverse. Given the nature of our data, we have no way of testing this. Nevertheless, even with weak ties, our point regarding the importance of social position in determining the sort of contacts an individual makes remains relevant. We illustrate the way in which we think the social similarity of networks leads to the reproduction of advantage and disadvantage with a series of cases, which we contend warrant the further testing of our proposition on larger data sets. Before presenting these cases, we should stress that our research does not cast doubt on the widespread view that network resources matter. There is no question that being socially isolated in Russia is an impediment to survival. This can be starkly illustrated by the experience of poorly-connected migrants in our sample, which confirms Clarke’s hypothesis about their fortunes within a ‘closed’ labour market. The case of Vera (3–26, b. 1947), an ethnic Russian single mother who arrived in Samara in 1998 from Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan (an area containing a highly polluted nuclear testing ground) is instructive. Vera remained in severe poverty throughout our study. Given her lack of connections, the only jobs to which she had access were those for which there was no competition. Thus, despite considerable experience in industry, her only job during the research period was as a caretaker at a kindergarten paying a minuscule monthly wage of 200 roubles (less than a quarter of the subsistence minimum at that time). She gave this job up when she had to travel to Kazakhstan to gather documents relating to her pension entitlement, and was unable to find another. At the end of the research she was in our excluded category, unemployed and in severe poverty. Her description of her life was one in which there was ‘nothing to eat. Constantly.’ Her only consolation was that her children were fed at school, ‘but I need to feed them at home. But what on? On nothing.’ This lack of local connections not only hindered Vera’s access to work, it also meant she received no support from relatives, and lacked any informal entrée to the local social services from whom she therefore received little support. In short, her status as a stranger in Samara has left her if not quite on the verge of starvation, certainly severely deprived.


153

This case illustrates the importance of networks to survival, but at the same time it is exceptional. Very few of our respondents are so isolated. Indeed, in general, those who ended up in our excluded category do not appear to have substantially weaker network support than those in our comfortable category. Given that we do not have full network maps for all our respondents, this is hard precisely to quantify. One indicator, however, is that those in the comfortable category mentioned receiving help from friends or relatives an average of three times during the research period, while for those in the excluded category the average was 6.3 times. Of course, those in the excluded category were far more likely to need help, but the fact that they received help more often at least suggests that their poverty was not the result of isolation. Rather, we argue that their problem was that they had the wrong sorts of contacts. Key disadvantages observed in our excluded category were ‘redundant’ professional qualifications and pre-pension age. The problem of the networks of these respondents was not that they were small, but that they were predominantly made up of individuals similarly situated in terms of age and professional disadvantage. This can be illustrated by the case of Olga (3–16, b. 1947), who in the Soviet era rose to the rank of health and safety engineer in an engine maintenance plant, before serving as a full-time enterprise trade union president for five years. After the enterprise trade union disbanded at the beginning of the 1990s she got a job in the personnel department of a different establishment, her last job before becoming unemployed. She was very proud of her career in the Soviet era, which she described as ‘first-rate’: ‘I really liked my work, and everything worked out for me.’ In short, Olga was a typical Soviet obshchestvennista—a proud worker and participant in Soviet social organisations, a divorcee who derived her main satisfaction from the public rather than the private sphere. As such, she was well connected. Indeed, trade union presidents controlled access to a wide variety of valued goods in the Soviet era (housing, holidays, kindergarten places), and were thus a soughtafter contact, their familiars pejoratively labelled blatnye—possessors of pull. By the end of our research, however, Olga defined her main problem as a lack of useful connections. She was impatient with the incompetent, in her opinion obviously blatnye, employees that she encountered in her daily life, and demanded: ‘Well, why are people taking my place, when I can’t get a job anywhere? Because I haven’t got contacts, I haven’t got any ties like that.’ Olga’s problem, however, is not social isolation per se: she has a rich network of friends and a supportive family. By the last interview she was being supported by her coresident mother’s pension, while she and her mother received help from her brother and sister-in-law who lived in the same block, and regularly invited them to dinner. She also reported receiving help from friends. Unlike Vera from Kazakhstan she reported, ‘I’m never hungry.’ Nevertheless, her contacts were unable to transform her situation—they had aged along with her, and were no longer in a position to help: Look, all the people who could help me—they are older than me. Take my dad. They’ve already died, or they’re on their pension, they’ve already lost contact with that world. It works out that a person ends up in a vacuum. Without good acquaintances, where someone knows you and can take you on. They even take a person for a job because he’s a relative, because he needs help, although he’s not up to the job, but they take him, because somebody’s looking out for him.


154

(3–16–4) Another respondent who ended up in the excluded category reported similar difficulties. Asked whether she had looked for work through friends, she replied: ‘I haven’t got friends like that… The people I worked with—they aren’t able to help’ (4–44–4). Given that her employment history comprised a succession of jobs at the lower end of the labour market, such as cleaning, this is not surprising. Indeed, the complaint that friends cannot provide help because they share the same problems is common: I can’t even get a job as a door-keeper—everywhere you need connections. And, you see, I’ve worked my whole life as an ITR, and all my connections are the same. And who is an ITR today? The first one out of a job. So it means it’s even hard to get a job as a door-keeper. (3–48–1f) I looked for work, though initially through acquaintances. But they’re all in the position that none of them knew anything, and none of their workplaces were taking on staff. And my acquaintances are also generally in planning institutes. These were in an even worse situation than that ‘GazNIIproekt’ [his employer]. So there wasn’t any work in my area. (3–49–1m) Although this evidence is not conclusive, it is highly suggestive of the way that the social similarity of networks can act as a trap. This contention can be further supported by evidence from our more successful respondents. The corollary of our argument regarding the reproduction of disadvantage is that the networks of those with advantages such as higher education should serve to further strengthen their position. Again, this appears to hold. The process can be neatly illustrated by the comments of one young male respondent from Ul’yanovsk, talking about his preferred method of job search: The most effective [way]—it’s…it’s your friends and colleagues, get it? It’s your, it’s to put it crudely, you could call it…an unofficial trade union, see, a trade union of graduates as it were, and your mates. Those who’ve already got a job, those who’ve got somewhere… In the majority of cases, it happens like this: I leave a job, and look among my friends for someone to take my place, if for some reason I want to leave … And it’s practically always like that…and, you see, we all switch round like that, see, it’s a professional type of union, a [real] trade union, not like that rubbish which for the most part you find around here. (2–52–1) A more detailed example of the process is provided by the case of Pavel (3–46, b. 1962). Pavel endured a long period of unemployment before suddenly, and without apparent effort, getting a good job through the use of networks. At first sight his case appeared to be an illustration of the power of networks to overcome social disadvantage, but on closer


155

inspection it revealed more about the potency of the unofficial ‘trade unions’ of the already advantaged. Pavel had an unfinished higher education and claimed to be a manager by profession. He was working as an employee in a private firm trading compact discs before leaving voluntarily just before the August 1998 crash, at which point he became unemployed, and thereby ended up in our sample. He had some savings and was still living with his parents, which meant that he was able to survive without a job from mid-1998 until the third stage of our research. During his period of inactivity he made very little effort to find work. As he put it: The labour market as it stands, and those jobs which I realistically— realistically!—could get—they would allow me to be exploited for 1,500– 2,000r.1 I don’t want to work for that kind of money… Well, the jobs which are available—they don’t suit me. And besides, to simply go and look for work—I wouldn’t say that I haven’t done it, but you couldn’t call it an active search… In a year’s time it will already be impossible to carry on lying on the sofa, contemplating, studying the papers and the television. On the other hand, now in general, well, everything around us—it’s in a kind of suspended state, it’s got to at some time or other come to something. I don’t say whether it will be good or bad, but it has to take some kind of definite shape… I am waiting for the state of the market [kon’’yuktura] to be defined. (3–46–2) On the evidence of the second interview, it seemed that Pavel might slip into permanent inactivity. By the third stage of the research, however, after eighteen months out of work, he had taken a job in a friend’s firm for a good wage: I kind of kept that variant for a rainy day—a friend from the institute, he’s got a small firm. It had been a possibility for a long time: in my time I helped him get by with credit, and other things. And so that variant was kind of always there. Well, so now I went to him [for a job]. (3–46–3) By the final interview, Pavel was ‘comfortable’ according to our categorisation. He had remained in the same job and was earning between 3,000 and 3,500r. a month, for a three- to four-day week, and declared himself very satisfied with this situation. On one level this case reveals the importance of connections. It certainly shows that having the right connections can fully substitute for ‘active’ job search through formal channels, which rather than predicting success is more of a symptom of exclusion. But Pavel’s case does not suggest that networks cross-cut established forms of stratification. Arguably the antecedent variable explaining this young man’s success was his (albeit incomplete) higher education, which provided the necessary forum in which he could form useful ties on which to build his subsequent working life. A similar conclusion can be drawn from the case of a Samara journalist, Vadim, (3– 37, b. 1960), whose position fluctuated sharply during the course of the research. At the point of the second interview he had managed to find work as the chief editor of a newly-


156

established youth paper, but the pay was low and irregular. He felt a strong responsibility as a breadwinner, and was also under heavy pressure from his wife to increase his income. Between the second and third stages of research he worked as a caretaker at the school where his wife was employed, and also worked independently decorating flats. While he enjoyed the creativity of the latter, his wife was worried by the income instability, and pushed him to get a stable and reasonably paid job as an ordinary factory worker. Having resigned himself to this work, he declared that he required nothing more, ‘not a career, nothing’. His friends, however, were seemingly not satisfied on his behalf, because by the final stage of the research he was working as the chief specialist in the press centre of Samara oblast’ tax office. As he put it, ‘It’s all down to my friends, I’ve got a lot of friends, they wanted to get me a job.’ Crucially, however, his friends had influence in an appropriate area of the economy. These examples demonstrate that having the right connections can engineer rapid changes in fortune, but at the same time they reveal that such changes are contingent on the possession of certain characteristics. Both Pavel and Vadim had fallen on bad times, but both of them had the benefit of higher education and prior work experience in areas of the economy not laid waste by reform. Given these advantages, they could be ‘saved’ by the friends who they had made in better times. Without the prior social advantage it is unlikely that they would have had the connections required to engineer such transformations. At the same time, it is necessary to reiterate the point made at the beginning of this section: social advantages such as higher education do need to be combined with networking. They do not bring advantages of their own accord. The evidence from our Moscow sample of employees of research institutes reveals this clearly. Those who get the extra work, grants and travel abroad necessary to make a decent living, are those who cultivate the right contacts. For example, a professional botanist, an academic fellow in a botanical gardens, theoretically possesses the necessary qualifications to work as a landscape gardener. But connections are required in order to turn this possibility into a reality: I’ve got, so to speak, masses of friends who are quite prosperous. It began from the fact that I did something for them, and then they recommended me to their friends, with the result that I’ve always got work in summer. (1–10–1m) This respondent, having found the means to use his qualifications through contacts, ended up in our comfortable category. In the other Moscow institute, foreign visits constitute one of the main potential routes to prosperity. But again, obtaining such work requires contacts. One respondent, for example, reported that he had the opportunity to go to Singapore for a month. Asked about how this trip would be financed, he replied ‘Well, yes, so to speak, I’ve got old friends there…’ (1–1–2). Networking is thus a crucial skill, but generally contacts arise organically on the basis of social interaction. The key is making the right contacts, and the already-advantaged are in a much better position to do this. Through their education and their work they meet people who are more likely to have the information and power to help them. Of course, some individuals are skilled networkers who explicitly set out to transcend the social limitations of their immediate milieu. But in our data such individuals are scarce.2


157

Generally, the characteristics of individuals are reflected in their networks. This, as will be seen, is a pattern which is reproduced when we examine the gender dimensions of networking.

Networks and gender We are in a better position to assess the gender dimensions of networking, because while the other social characteristics of those who helped our respondents are usually hidden, the workings of the Russian language generally reveal their sex.3 Our data shows that in the vast majority (three-quarters) of cases in our data men and women receive help from members of their own sex. Thus, of the 211 cases of men receiving help (of any kind) from a person whose sex is identified encountered in our data, 155 are instances of help from other men, and only 56 from women.4 Likewise in the 287 cases of women receiving help from an individual of identifiable sex, 213 are cases of help from other women, and only 74 of help from men.5 This finding also applies to job search, with which men predominantly receive help from other men (143 instances versus 30 of help from women), and women from other women (135 cases against 44 of help from men). We argue that the gendered operation of networks is one of the mechanisms through which job segregation by sex and female disadvantage in the labour market are reproduced. At the same time, however, some effects of gender differences in network use are less clear-cut, and merit further examination. Gendered networks and job-search: the reproduction of male advantage? Our data clearly show that networks are gendered. This is not surprising, since within the context of Russian gender culture, leisure and communal activities tend to be conducted in same-sex groups and the sex segregation of networks tends to intensify with age. The young are more likely to socialise in mixed as well as same-sex groups, in part because as young adults they are generally interested in establishing relationships with members of the opposite sex. After marriage, networks tend to become less mixed. This applies not only to close friendships, but also to casual acquaintances, since men and women increasingly become engaged in gender-specific worlds. Workplaces are often segregated by sex—even in mixed enterprises the ‘collectives’ (work groups) tend to be sexsegregated—as is everyday life. Thus, for example, child care facilities and schools provide a key sphere within which young mothers (but rarely young fathers) interact. Even the child-care professionals they encounter in this sphere will be predominantly female. Meanwhile, favourite male leisure activities such as fishing and drinking serve to cement ties between men. The gendered character of networks has implications regarding the quality of the help with job search men and women are likely to receive from their contacts. Ashwin and Yakubovich (2005), using data from Valery Yakubovich’s large-scale survey of hires carried out in 1999 in Samara,6 found that all other things being equal, a job delivered by a female contact paid approximately 12 per cent less than a job found by a male contact and was statistically indistinguishable from jobs obtained through formal channels. These


158

data also support our contention that networks are sex-specific. In Yakubovich’s survey data 89 per cent of respondents with a female-dominated ‘action set’ (the part of a worker’s network involved in the process of getting a job) were women. As Ashwin and Yakubovich suggest, the lower quality of the jobs thrown up by female contacts seems to result from the fact that women predominantly have information about the areas of the economy in which they themselves are active—areas in which wages are likely to be lower. That is, as argued above, the relative homogeneity of networks in terms of social characteristics serves as a mechanism through which the advantages and disadvantages of different groups are reproduced. In addition, the fact that men dominate in management positions means that they are more likely to have influence over the process of hiring. According to Goskomstat statistics, 64 per cent of managers at all levels are men (Goskomstat, 2002:90). We would therefore expect men, who receive more help from other men than do women, to have greater access to patronage than do women. Certainly, our female respondents perceive this to be the case. As one of them put it: Within my circle there simply aren’t any business women. The sort of acquaintances who can [help]. Well, there are some who themselves work somewhere or other, but those who could also influence the fact of someone getting a job—there aren’t any… Because a person’s got to have a top position, at the level of director or vice director, in order to have an influence, right? Because lower than, say, shop-floor manager, he doesn’t play any real role [in hiring]. (1–18–1f, a factory economist) In fact, however, although the findings from our data tend in the expected direction, the gender differences are much smaller than we anticipated. We categorised our cases of assistance with job search provided by a person of known sex into those entailing information, on the one hand, and influence (patronage), on the other (and excluded those cases—65 in all—where there was not sufficient information in the interview to determine the precise character of the help). Help to men entailed influence twice as often as it involved solely information (106 versus 51 cases). Help to women also more often entailed influence than information (91 versus 64 cases). The gender difference in access to patronage in our data is thus small. It is notable, however, that women more often derived their influence from across the gender divide than did men: over a third of the cases in which they received patronage involved a male helper, while only 16 per cent of comparable cases for men involved a female helper. Overall, nearly two-thirds of cases of ‘patronage’ in our data involved a male provider of help (122 cases, as against 75 involving a female patron). Given the nature of our data we cannot read much into these differences, though there seems to be little reason to speak of a male monopoly of influence over the hiring process. But although the support for our hypothesis is slight in our own data, our analysis conceals two things. First, it says nothing about the character of the jobs in the gift of male and female patrons. Men are both more likely to be found at the top of hierarchies, and to dominate in the most lucrative branches of the economy. Thus, in line with Ashwin and Yakubovich’s findings, and the evidence presented in Chapter 2, we would


159

expect women to control access to lower-paid positions. Second, it may be that male network support is a systematic feature of Russian employment relations which extends far beyond the moment of hiring. As a successful young female respondent from Ul’yanovsk, who made it into our ‘comfortable’ category, explained: All the same it’s easier for men. Because, take a look at our bosses today, who are they? Basically it’s men. Sessions in the banya [a type of sauna], having an aperitif over discussion, those sort of things constitute a problem in themselves…perhaps some kind of salacious joke, when there are women present. Understand? It’s simply easier for men to find a common language with each other… Perhaps it’s called socialising like a man [po muzhski], behaving like a man in their environment. [But] women can’t allow themselves [to do] everything. (2–60–4f) As this quotation shows, the gendered character of networks is not merely a matter of their sex-composition. The very way in which men socialise with each other constitutes a barrier to the entry of women into their territory (as has been well documented in other contexts). Thus, even if women have profitable connections with men (as a number of our female respondents did), it may be difficult for them to make full use of them because of the gendered character of informal relations. Having said all this, the amount of support that men and women receive in job search does not differ—in our data they receive help equally often. So even if men are in a position to provide information about more lucrative jobs, and are marginally more likely to have influence over hiring decisions, women are not deprived of information and assistance. Moreover, Clarke argues that assistance with job search is likely to have a greater pay-off for those facing discriminatory barriers. His analysis of the ISITO household survey showed that a woman who got her job through connections earned 10 per cent more than a woman who did not, and, if she was appointed by her connection, earned an additional 18 per cent (2000:501). These variables were not significant for men. Our data do not allow us to assess such an effect, though we have no reason to doubt it. But despite all these qualifications, we would argue that ‘the closure of the labour market’ is more likely to reproduce vertical and horizontal segregation by sex than it is to challenge it. This results from the gendered character of networks. Women will mainly learn about jobs and gain patronage from other women, and this will reinforce their confinement to certain spheres of the economy. Of course, the gendered operation of networks is only one among a number of mechanisms through which such sex segregation perpetuated. On the basis of our data it is not possible to assess the relative significance of these, although we would not expect the gendered operation of networks to be a prime cause of male advantage in the labour market. Nevertheless, we feel that our contention regarding the tendency of gendered networks to reproduce female disadvantage merits further analysis.


160

Gender differences in network support Assistance with job search was only one of the forms of help our respondents received, and the gender differences in the receipt of other forms of help were more striking. Our data suggest that women receive financial help and other forms of material assistance significantly more frequently than men, and that this help generally comes from other women. There are thirty-five cases of men receiving material or financial help in our data, while there are eighty cases of women receiving such help. This finding is in line with data from the 1998 ISITO household survey in which more than two-thirds of exchange partners were women (Clarke, 2002:201). Clarke’s analysis of these data also showed that male-headed households were much less likely to both give and receive help than were female-headed households (ibid.: 201). In this section we demonstrate that there are structural reasons why women are more likely to give and receive more help than men. We are not claiming that women are more altruistic than men, but that their role and position encourage the formation of exchange relations. The crucial factors, explored below, are: the importance of female ties in the functioning of the (post-) Soviet family, the role of women as domestic managers, and the strong normative obligations on women to provide help, especially to family members. In later sections we explore the implications of the gender difference in network support, examining whether it has an impact on the ability of men and women to deal with the problems they encounter in Russia’s transitional labour market. As Anna Rotkirch argues, the Soviet family was held together by ‘women-centred, cross-generational ties’ (2000:115). These Soviet family ties, she later suggests, also included the closest circle of friends (ibid.: 120). These strong female ties have survived the transition and are clearly evident in our data. Exchange and support of various kinds are integral parts of such relationships, as the following quotations illustrate. The first comes from Tamara, whose experience was discussed in Chapter 3, and the last from Olga whose case was discussed above: My sister at first helped us more, when they weren’t paying us at the factory, and when I was later unemployed. But now we’re both breadwinners. Yes, and San’ka calls both of us mummy. He cries, ‘Mummy’ from the living room, and we answer him from the kitchen, ‘Which one do you want?’ My mother-in-law comes often, she doesn’t help us out financially any more, and we can’t help her either, but we simply give each other moral support, and get on well. My sister and I do everything together, we don’t calculate who’ll cook, who’ll wash the floor. We were one family in childhood, and that’s how we’ve remained. (4–13–1) My mum helps us, both practically and financially—that is, it’s always possible to borrow money from her, and she’s always buying things for the children.


161

And how significant is your mother’s help, if you try to estimate it in percentage terms? I think that sometimes it amounts to half our income! It’s even shameful, but I am sure that it’s all fine, because we’ll begin to support ourselves, and then we’ll be able to help mum. That’s essential, we’ve got a very close, intimate relationship. It’s like we’ve got one soul. (4–01–1)7 My mother helps, of course. We eat together, and eat a lot because what I wouldn’t be able to buy myself, my mum buys and we eat together—that is in its way also a help to me. (3–16–2) Female ties thus play an important role in the operation of Russian households. Particularly important is the mother-child bond. This supports the view of Golod and Kletsin (1994) regarding the prevalence in Russia of, if not the child-centred family, then at least the child-centred nature of women’s fate. Fathers also provide help to their children, and much of the financial assistance provided to offspring is ‘parental’. Nonetheless, mothers play a central role because their help is so wide-ranging, comprising not only money but also labour (such as caring for grandchildren), consultation on various issues, food and other help in kind. Moreover, helping grown children is an important source of meaning in the lives of older women and a positive means of defining their identity. For example, one of our female respondents, describing her relationship with her mother, noted that the latter often lent her money, but reported that: My younger brother sometimes just takes it without giving it back. But she [mother] is even proud of that, it’s almost as if she feels irreplaceable then. Then she’s really satisfied, and talks about it with pride. (4–07–3) As this quotation indicates, maternal aid is not restricted to daughters, although, as will be discussed below, it may be the case that close reciprocal ties are more common between mothers and daughters. Exchange between women is also fostered by women’s control of the household. Women are nearly always in charge of tasks such as cooking and clothing the children, and this gives them both an overview of the needs of the household, and control of the goods which in the poorest households (well represented in our Syktyvkar and Samara samples) form the basis of exchange. Exchange of such items is embedded in women’s everyday lives, and is a taken-for-granted form of sociability, support and household management: My friends help me. But, again, what do I mean by help? If I really need money, not very much, I know that I can, most likely, borrow it. But I have to pay it back… Among my girlfriends there is a constant exchange of old things. Well, and again, if someone comes to me, I’ll try to feed


162

them something, and, on the other hand, I know that if I turn up at someone’s house, and there’s something in the fridge, then they’ll feed me. But I don’t know how far that counts as help—it’s normal human interaction. (3–25–1) We even organised mutual help with things. Something doesn’t suit someone, is too big—they give it to someone else. From one child to the next. The adults don’t suit something or are sick of it—they also pass it between one another, so that the things are worn. (1–35–1) For example, I had a spare mattress. I could have just taken it to the dump, but I phoned a female friend, who’s got a dacha, and inquired whether she needed a mattress. She needed one. My friend was pleased that I called: ‘And I’ll bring you apples’. And though I didn’t ask for anything—I’d have just given her the mattress, but all the same. And we help each other in everything—whoever has something spare, we don’t throw it away, we give it to one another. (3–16–3) Thus, the central role of women in the family encourages them to provide assistance to others, while their role as household managers gives them control of the resources necessary to supply help and maintain reciprocal relations. This may have a wider impact on women’s behaviour, encouraging them to provide help to those outside their immediate circle, because of what Ashwin and Yakubovich (2005) call the ‘transposition of dispositions’. They argue that women develop a disposition towards helping behaviour within the household that is extended to other social situations. Meanwhile, since men are rarely involved in household management, they are less likely to engage in exchange involving food, clothing, mattresses, and the like. Finally, women are under more normative pressure than men to provide certain forms of help—in particular to family members. While ‘women’s work’—baby-sitting, looking after old or sick relatives—is seen as a duty, the sort of work men perform in the household is often seen as having a monetary price. In our data, women both give and receive help in the form of labour much more often than men—both in the domestic sphere and at work. This is given free of charge, although it may be repaid in kind, in the type of on-going reciprocal relations described above. Men’s labour, however, carries a higher status, and men are not perceived as having the same level of obligation to help. Therefore, even among family members assistance may be paid for, and is seen as a form of supplementary work. This is clearly illustrated in the following example, cited by a respondent in order to illustrate his ability to earn money on the side: I repaired my niece’s car—[and earned] 1,700 roubles. The engine was knocking [so I had to look at] the timing chain, the distributor to regulate the valves. She arrived, and the girl was on the verge of tears: Uncle Valera, help me!… And for one day’s work I got 1700.


163

(3–09–3) This is not to say that men are greedier than women, but rather that male work is seen as having a monetary value, even when it is not at all complex: One time I earned 200 roubles on the side. I just did it to help. I put up a lamp and checked the wiring. I didn’t even want to take any money, but it was hard to refuse. You did it for an acquaintance [po znakomstvu]? Yes, my acquaintance asked me to do it. (3–55–4) Effectively this means that help provided by men is seen as discretionary, a ‘favour’, which, if it is given, should be repaid in some way. By contrast, women are seen as having an obligation to help family members. Their help may be rewarded, although, as will be revealed below, this is not guaranteed. Women: sustained by exchange? What is the significance of the centrality of women in exchange relations? This section examines this question, while the following section turns to look at the nature of exchange between men and the implications of this for their well-being. These sections do not focus directly on the issue of labour market success, but look at the wider issue of well-being, which has an important bearing on labour market behaviour. For example, the extent to which individuals are discouraged by labour market problems will often determine whether these problems become permanent. The support they receive from others can be crucial in this regard.8 It is therefore not surprising that we conclude that the centrality of women in exchange relations generally works to their benefit, although it does have a downside. On the one hand, women do appear to derive moral support from their sisterly exchange relations, and this may serve to prevent them from slipping into damaging demoralisation. Moreover, in some cases the support of other women can facilitate far-reaching transformations. On the other hand, women receive more help because they give more, and sometimes the extent of women’s help to others can be at the expense of their own well-being. Thus, there is a duality to women’s central position in exchange relations which is explored below. To deal first with the positive side: although women may not have the resources to provide major assistance, even minor gestures can make a crucial difference to those on the edge. For example, one respondent from Samara, who was left with literally no income after reaching the end of her period of unemployment benefit entitlement, reported: July and August I lived in the countryside. First, I lived in the village Shelekhmet’ at a friend’s—she’s got her own house. I lived on mushrooms, I caught fish myself, bought some smetana [sour cream] there, and cooked it all, ate it, that’s how I survived. (3–39–3)


164

All this respondent’s friend was able to do was have her to stay in her house, and give her access to the cottage garden, but this assistance came at a crucial time. It did not change the respondent’s situation—by the end of our research she was still unemployed, and ended up in our ‘excluded’ category. Such help, however, did provide a ray of hope in a bleak life. During the last interview the respondent reported that she again planned to spend the summer by the Volga with a female friend. She hoped this would restore her health before a new attempt to find work in the autumn. Support from friends also played an important role in maintaining the morale of Olga (3–16). Although, as mentioned above, her friends were unable to help her find work, they did keep her from complete discouragement, at a time when she was not only unemployed and penniless, but was also suffering the indignity of having broken front teeth and no money to pay for a dentist. She reported: Life is so miserable! When I smashed my last front tooth, I understood that I had to do something radical for myself. And when I got together with my girlfriends I right away got people organised, and we began to go dancing… Now I’ve understood that unless I go out and meet people, people that I don’t know, then it would be possible to just to let things go altogether [chelovek pros to opus tit’sy a mozhet]. And when my young girlfriend asked me to dances… I got myself ready and went. Even with those broken front teeth. I thought that I needed some kind of push, and now we go to dances from time to time. And, overall, give ourselves a shake. (3–16–4) Although both these respondents were ‘excluded’ in terms of our categorisation, they were in fact both managing to hold themselves together. Without the support of family and friends to sustain them, the situation of these women would have been considerably worse, and the chances of their surviving until pension age—which in both cases offered the most realistic prospect of improved living standards—altogether more slim. In other cases, female moral support can actually serve as a basis on which women are able to transform their situation. For example, one young woman, a seamstress by profession, was able to recover herself after her husband’s unfaithfulness and her subsequent divorce, and relying on the support of her female network, set up a small business. The important role played by her friends can be clearly seen in the following quotation, in which the respondent is explaining how they helped her adjust to unfamiliar territory: Remember that you were scared, and said that it was hard at the market? Well, this girl—I found out that I knew her, and we somehow found a common language, and it turns out that they know the people that I know, and I know people that they know—it’s a small town, you see. We became friends, they’re good girls, they’re the same age as me, only they trade themselves. I wouldn’t have gone to the market if it hadn’t been for the people I knew there. And, straightaway, it turns out that me and that girl have other friends there too.


165

(4–01–4) A similar example of female support is provided by a woman who was coaxed into trying out the shuttle-trade business by a female acquaintance at her work: The thing is, I went to Moscow for the first time to buy myself a fur coat, and as I wanted to justify the fare I decided to buy some goods [to sell]. You see, working in our department was a lively girl who liked to take risks, and she for a whole year kept, as they say, kicking me: ‘Enough of playing the fool, come and do business with me.’ She tried to kind of shake me up, and when I went [to Moscow] I realised that it was not scary, but possible. At the beginning I didn’t sell [the goods], I was kind of embarrassed. My mother sold them because she had previously worked at a garment workshop, and they made clothes there and then went through the villages, selling them… Looking at my mother, I already began to sell. (3–32–1) This respondent did not ultimately stay in the shuttle-trade, but nonetheless the example illustrates the importance of female support in giving women the confidence to take risks and try out new kinds of work. This supports the findings of Yaroshenko (2002), who (on the basis of the Syktyvkar data from our study) also argues that female ties are important in the development of career paths that can lift women out of poverty. Despite all the gains that women receive from their networks, it is important to recognise that women’s role as providers of assistance of various kinds can have costs. As mentioned above, women face strong normative pressure to help others, in particular family members. Although this is often a source of self-esteem, it can also be damaging. Indeed, the downward trajectory of some women can be at least partly explained by their role as unpaid carers. This can be seen, for example, in the case of Galya (3–21, b. 1945), who ended up in our poorest category, having spent two years working as an unpaid carer for her daughter-in-law’s grandmothers, one of whom was paralysed: My daughter-in-law had two grandmothers, both of them ill, and both of them were round my neck. I had to help, so that nobody could say to Dima [her son] that you don’t help your own [relatives], but, look, we help… I’ve now worked out that anywhere else it would have been possible to be paid for that kind of work [looking after the elderly]; I could have worked somewhere and earned money. Then my work was there. Does your older son help you now? He doesn’t help at all, not with food, or anything…see, you do so much for them, and you don’t receive any help. (3–21–4) By the last interview Galya was obviously feeling resentful about all her unpaid work, but at the same time her comments highlight the pressure she felt under to do it. Notably,


166

she was worried that her son’s reputation would be sullied if she failed to do what was expected of her. Looking at Galya’s work history, it is clear that her period as an unpaid carer contributed to her downward trajectory. As she put it: ‘with every year you fall further and further’. To compound matters, Galya claimed that she had not received any kind of recompense from her son. She reported, ‘He never asks, well, mum, is there anything that you need?’ and noted bitterly that when she was given things by her son and daughter-in-law, it was only worn-out items otherwise fit for the bin. In spite of her disappointment, however, she continued to see giving as very important. Her main complaint about her poverty during the last interview was that: ‘to buy some kind of present for the children, the grandchildren, is impossible’. As has been seen above, often this kind of behaviour does bring its own reward, and sustains a network of supportive mutually beneficial relations. But reciprocity is not guaranteed, and this is a potential risk factor for women with a strong sense of familial duty. Judging from the number of female respondents who complain about their sons’ egotism, and the number of young male respondents happily living off their parents, this appears to be a particular risk in women’s relations with their sons. Despite this important qualification, we would argue that women’s networks play an important role in maintaining women’s morale, and may help explain why women seem to be less vulnerable to the demoralisation and drunkenness frequently encountered among our poorer male respondents. This argument is supported by an analysis of VTsIOM data which attempts to link social capital with trends in mortality in Russia (Kennedy et al., 1998). The conclusion of the study is stark: those who lack social capital ‘get sick and die’ (ibid.: 2039). The sociability of Russian women may therefore be an important factor in explaining their comparative longevity. Women’s networks can also in some cases provide the support necessary for women to find an exit from poverty. Although we have several cases of this in our data, it is difficult to assess how common this is, and, in terms of its overall significance, it is unlikely to rival the benefit that men derive from friends in high places. Nevertheless, we would argue that in general women’s networks serve a sustaining function, and can occasionally facilitate far-reaching transformations. Are men’s networks as robust as women’s? As mentioned above, in our data men give and receive less help than women in all areas other than job search, a finding supported by the ISITO household survey. Men do not involve themselves in household management, and are less engaged in family networks than women, and are therefore less likely to be involved in the sort of on-going exchange relations between households outlined above. They are also under less normative pressure to help family members as a matter of course. Partly as a consequence of this, we suggest that men’s network support may prove less effective than women’s in times of distress. Before moving on to discuss this proposition, it should be stressed that we are not arguing that men generally fail to help others. This is far from being the case. Fathers play an important role in helping their offspring (both sons and daughters) find their first jobs and offer other important forms of support. Moreover, the resources at men’s disposal are generally greater, and correspondingly they have more to give. The really substantial financial aid or gifts encountered in our data nearly all come from men. Men


167

and women seem to benefit equally from such largesse, as the two most notable examples in our data reveal. In one case, a female respondent (3–44) received a gift of 3,500 dollars from her boss with whom she was on friendly but, according to her, not intimate terms so that she could buy a flat: He used to say: find yourself a flat, I’m sick of the fact that you spend all your pay on rent… And then recently he said: ‘You know, my [last] deal was so successful, it even took me by surprise, go on, take this money’. (3–44–3) The other case concerned an unemployed philosopher (3–42) who was sponsored by an acquaintance so that he could work on his book on Hegel without being distracted by the need to earn money. The extent of his monthly allowance was enough to place him in our comfortable category: Well, an acquaintance from my youth agreed, that until I finish my work, he’ll pay me a certain sum…5,000 roubles a month. Of course, I was modest. He asked how much I needed to live on. Of course, he could afford to give more. (3–42–3) Both the benefactors involved were businessmen, and the extent of their generosity can be explained by the extent of their wealth. On average, it can be assumed that the majority of those in a position to make substantial gifts of this nature will be men. Such gifts are comparatively rare, however, while the sort of mutual help provided by women is woven into the fabric of everyday life. Aside from the greater resources available to some men, male and female network support differs in other ways. Men receive help from colleagues one and a half times more often than from family members, while women receive help from the two groups equally often. Russian women are more engaged in family networks than are men, and, as argued above, household management provides both the impetus and the resources for women to engage in on-going exchange relations with other members of their sex. Male networks, by contrast, tend to be based on work; they are more specialised and ‘professional’ in character. The positive side of this as far as men are concerned is that, as already mentioned, other men are a good source of labour market information, and are more likely than women to have some influence on hiring decisions. Men’s networks will in many cases deliver high-quality assistance with job search—as the examples of the two ‘rescued’ respondents (3–46 and 3–37) cited above demonstrate. At the same time, however, there is some evidence to suggest that men’s networks are less sustaining in periods of distress than are women’s. There are several reasons for this. First, it seems that status considerations play a far greater role in men’s relations than they do in women’s. Equality of status seems to be important in interactions between men. Although the amounts given and received may not be precisely equal, each side of the relationship needs to be able to maintain his sense of independence and dignity. As one respondent put it:


168

It works like this—you’ve got to constantly support the ties with your acquaintances. And you can support those relations and have the means to do it because you work. You’ve got money, you earn it, and so you don’t go to him and say, ‘Lend me [some money]’, but talk as equals [kak ravnyi s ravnym]. (1–54–3) Even the philosopher mentioned above who was in the unusual position of having a sponsor, underlined that the financial support he received did not make him dependent, and did not require any special gratitude on his part: He’s not a sponsor, but more like a patron. There’s nothing in it for him personally. The idea of a patron—it’s a person who in their youth wanted to do something, to study philosophy, for example, or figure skating. But time has passed, he’s grown past that age and, well, he hasn’t been able to do what he’d hoped, he didn’t have the inclination or possibilities to live that life himself. If you can’t do it yourself, you can at least let someone else live that life. I don’t beg, I give [my patron] the chance to do a good turn [emphasis added]. (3–42–3) This carefully constructed and no doubt well-rehearsed defence against any implied charge of dependence and unmanliness neatly turns the recipient of aid into the benefactor. That such a pre-emptive defence is required itself speaks of the difficulties for men of being involved in unequal exchange relationships. In addition to being imbued with status considerations, men’s relations also require careful servicing to keep them functional. As the respondent quoted above put it: ‘You’ve got to constantly support the ties with your acquaintances.’ While women’s exchange relations within the household are embedded in everyday life, men’s relations at work seem to require more particular attention, as can be seen in the following quotation. The respondent concerned was interested in being transferred within his section, and was reflecting on his relations with his boss. It was clear to him that maintaining a professional acquaintance required special effort, although at the same time he was confused by the status issues involved, because his acquaintance (who had helped him get his job), while being his superior at work, was significantly younger than him: Well, I still haven’t been round to sit and drink with him after work, I haven’t turned up with a bottle, I haven’t sat with them—it’s still kind of uncomfortable all the same. Although he takes an interest: asks how I am. It’s just something that men do [kakaya-to muzhskaya praktika]—go round for a drink… Well, it’s something you do if you more or less know a person… Well, between us there’s a big difference—I’m already over 50, and I don’t even know if he’s 40 yet. Yes, probably, I have to kind of turn up for a drink. Just to put my problem to him in a dignified way. I know, through conversations, that the vice-president of the general service


169

department,…that they quite often stay behind, stay late after work. Well, perhaps, I’ll go and see the man later. (3–02–4) In order to service and utilise their professional ties, men need to turn up for a drink and bring along a contribution—a bottle and perhaps some appropriate snacks. In doing this, however, it is important that they retain their dignity—which is why this respondent feels ‘uncomfortable’ about the ritual of calling in on his younger boss. Without this kind of attention male acquaintance seems to dry up; it needs the ‘lubrication’ of chat combined with something stronger. The problem is that precisely at the moment that men need help, dropping by for a drink with acquaintances becomes more difficult because then they are no longer talking ‘as equals’. If they become unemployed, then the workplace-based interaction of staying late is excluded, while it also becomes more problematic to engage in male forms of sociability outside work. Visits to bars, banyas, and sports centres require money, and even apparently free activities such as hunting demand some outlay: the wife of one jobless respondent (3–09) banned him from hunting because she said the amount it cost in petrol, cartridges and so on was sufficient to buy a small feast at the market and still have money left over. Thus, both status and financial considerations can conspire to cut unemployed or needy men off from the contacts with the potential to help them. Our argument is therefore that men’s networks are more vulnerable than women’s, and this fragility reveals itself precisely at the moments of adversity when men need help. Since they are focused on work, men’s networks are automatically placed under strain by unemployment, while status considerations and lack of money can inhibit men from keeping up with old acquaintances when they are down on their luck.9 By contrast, female support networks, since they are often focused on family and household, are less structured by formal social standing, and are therefore more robust in the face of changes in fortune.10 This means that men run a greater risk of isolation in hard times, because it becomes difficult for them to ask for help. As one male respondent put it: Now all my acquaintances are keeping to themselves [vse sami po sebe]. I already tried to pick up with my acquaintances, but all the acquaintances that I had—they are all at the age where it’s not a good idea to disturb them, it’s simply not right to disturb them [prosto ne nado bespokoit’]. (3–60–2) Certainly, a comparison of male and female accounts of receiving help shows that, in contrast to women, men very rarely mention receiving moral support from their friends (as opposed to family members). One exception to this was Anatolii (3–29, b. 1957), but, as will be seen, his case tends to support rather than undermine our argument. Anatolii was a divorced former teacher, who spent the research period caring for his co-resident dying mother, while working from home as a masseur. During the last interview he reported being unable to work because his mother’s cancer had entered its final stages. He was far from despairing, however, and emphasised the support he received: ‘The church, friends, my sister, my daughter—they bring groceries, medicine, they sit with my mother, somehow we manage. It happens that I’m just sitting there and then, bang, my


170

friends bring round some stuff’ (3–29–4). As should be apparent from this description of Anatolii’s life, he was not playing a conventional male role, and nor did he feel himself constrained by prevailing gender stereotypes. He was essentially running his household, had links with the church, and had little interest in social status in the conventional sense. For this reason, the argument we outlined above explaining the strength of women’s networks would have led us to predict that Anatolii would be similarly blessed with reliable contacts. This is not to argue that more ‘typical’ men do not receive any support. But once they are outside the world of work, mutual support does not appear to arise organically out of their everyday activities in the same way that it does in the case of women. This may help explain why men appear more likely to fall into demoralisation and alcoholism, especially when they are not married. Respondent (3–60) quoted above, for example, was quite gloomy during his second interview, during which he admitted that he spent most of the day on the sofa. He did, however, mention that his wife was very supportive. By the next interview he had found work, and he was still in the same job at the last stage of research. With such a falling off among his acquaintances, had he been single he would have been highly vulnerable to demoralisation and its associated risks. As it was, he was not happy with his work life, but named his wife’s forty-fifth birthday party—to which they invited lots of friends—as the best event during the research period. If we compare our accounts of the extent to which men and women are sustained by their networks, they seem to fit into our overall story about male and female fortunes in the labour market. In terms of employment, men are better off—and the superior information and greater levels of influence that inhere in male-dominated networks both reflect and help to reproduce this advantage. At the same time, however, women’s networks appear to be more robust and sustaining, and this would help to account for the fact that, though women are on average poorer than men, they seem better able to cope with poverty than are men. While the distress of men during transition has revealed itself in increasing alcohol abuse, rising suicide rates, and a dramatic fall in life expectancy, women have proved less susceptible to demoralisation, drunkenness and despair. The above accounts reveal the sustaining power of female mutual assistance which, though it cannot lift women out of poverty, can stave off life-destroying hopelessness.

The future Are connections as important to our young respondents as to those from older generations? As mentioned in the introduction, the views of our Ul’yanovsk respondents, who we consider to be those most likely to break away from Soviet practices, in general do not diverge from those of the rest of our sample, and nor does their behaviour. Our young respondents rely heavily on the networks of their parents, in particular when looking for their first job, as the following two examples reveal: In general I didn’t look [for work]. It was him [her father] who said that I had already sat at home for a long time, and it was time for me to work, and he found me that job [I mentioned]. (2–17–4f)


171

On my own, on my own, probably I wouldn’t have begun to look [for work]. You wouldn’t have, why not? Because it’s kind of all the same to me. Probably my relatives do more for me than I do for myself, they kind of make an effort on my behalf, and I agree to it later once they’ve sorted it out. (2–18–1m) The level of support accorded to these respondents corresponds with the accounts our older respondents gave in their work history interviews of the help they received getting their first jobs during the Soviet era. Meanwhile, the Ul’yanovsk respondents also report receiving help from friends in getting jobs. Since very few of them have established their own households, it is difficult to make any comment on the approach of the young to other forms of exchange. Having said this, Elena Omel’chenko (2003) has argued on the basis of the Ul’yanovsk data that the most dynamic respondents in this group are independent, value their autonomy and attempt partially or fully to avoid getting work through blat. This group of respondents is particularly likely to use new techniques such as distributing their CVs via the Internet. Certainly, some respondents in this group claimed that the networking practices of the past were no longer appropriate to the new economy and that different approaches were needed. They argued: Looking for work through contacts is not very effective, the main route is through all those employment agencies, through distributing your CV through the Internet—that’s the standard route. (2–10–3f) Now, of course, things have improved. There are more options. Because new firms have already moved to a new level. They select their staff differently. Now the level of competition is higher, and therefore they need to take qualified specialists, because if they take the blatnye they won’t make much money out of them, the money they need to feed themselves. Therefore to some degree it’s working out that they need people who work, who can work, who’ve got knowledge, or are capable of learning. (2–4–4m) This stance is still not dominant, however, even among our Ul’yanovsk respondents. Whether or not Russian firms will begin to favour competitive hiring as opposed to informal channels, as the above respondent suggests they have, is still an open question. For the moment, our data suggest that most young people are continuing the practices of their parents. Given that their initiation into the labour market often relies on the informal ties of their parents, this is not surprising.


172

Conclusion Our research suggests that the problem faced by those at the bottom of the labour market hierarchy is not that they lack network resources, but that their contacts are unable to provide the quality of help required to transform their situation. They can help them eke out a meagre living, but nothing more. Meanwhile, the better-situated (in terms of education and other social characteristics) tend to have more powerful friends. Our research confirms that networks have some power in their own right, which we would define in the following way. Having a rich network of contacts will not of itself lift an individual out of poverty, but it may enable her to survive what might otherwise be literally fatal periods of hardship. Or, to put it another way, the use of networks rarely transforms the situation of individuals, but it can sustain them within that situation. In terms of gender, our research suggests that the networks of men and women tend to be dominated by members of their own sex. Building on this, we argue that the widespread use of networks to secure employment is one of the means through which gender segregation of employment is reproduced. We do not, however, have the data required to assess the relative significance of this vis-à-vis other mechanisms. While we think ‘the closure of the labour market’ contributes something to male advantage in employment, networks do not solely benefit men. Women’s role within the family and household involves them in stable patterns of exchange relations which can help to support them in times of trouble. Men’s networks are more centred on work, and status considerations are of greater importance in the functioning of men’s ties with each other. This means that while men may benefit from the position of their contacts in good times, when they face difficulties, their networks may prove less sustaining than those of women.

Notes 1 Well above the subsistence minimum of the time, but not above the regional average wage. 2 One example is a woman with an evangelistic enthusiasm for networking who was given information by her younger son’s teacher which enabled her to get a job at a firm producing pelmeni (a food similar to ravioli). As she put it:

Of course, if you sit at home, then you won’t get any chances [of work]… You’ve got to go everywhere. We went round the factories and round our acquaintances. You’ve got to go, get to know people. I also went to some courses. You’ve absolutely got to get to know people. Acquaintances, acquaintances [Znakomstva, znakomstva]. I started to participate in things at the school—and see, the teacher helped me. (3–54–2) 3 The words friend and acquaintance have a masculine and feminine form, which indicates the sex of the contact. 4 In eighty-nine cases the sex of the helper(s) was disguised by the use of plurals such as ‘friends’, ‘contacts’, ‘relatives’. 5 There were ninety-one cases in which the sex of our female respondents’ helper (s) was hidden.


173

6 This involved a two-stage stratified clustered probability sample of 1,143 hires in ninety-three organisations representing all the economic branches except for state administration and finance. 7 As will be seen later in this chapter, this respondent turned out not to have ‘one soul’ with her husband who was spending his income on another woman. Once they divorced, her female support network became even more important to her. 8 For a summary of the evidence on the links between social connectedness and health as found in US-based studies, see Putnam (2000:326–335). According to him, the main message of the studies is that, ‘Social networks help you stay healthy’ (ibid.: 331), as well as offering protection against depression and stress. 9 This argument finds some support in Gallie et al.’s analysis of the Social Change and Economic Life Initiative (SCELI) data from the UK in the 1980s (1994). They found that unemployed women were more involved in leisure activities than unemployed men which they felt reflected the fact that:

Men’s activities [the chief of which they cite as ‘going to the pub’] may have been more costly and therefore more vulnerable with unemployment. For women [who ‘were more likely to visit others and have people round to their homes’], the key resource may have been time rather than money with unemployment facilitating a slightly higher level of activity. (ibid.: 246) 10 Again this finds support in Gallie et al.’s analysis of the UK SCELI data (1994). They found that the networks of unemployed men were more likely than those of women to contain a majority of other unemployed people. Although the networks of unemployed women did not contain more employed people, they contained economically inactive people—highlighting the fact that women’s networks are less employment-centric than men’s (ibid.: 253–254).

References Ashwin, S. (1996) ‘Forms of collectivity in a non-monetary society’, Sociology, 30, 1: 21–39. Ashwin, S. and Yakubovich, V. (2005) ‘Cherchez la femme: women as supporting actors in the Russian labour market’, European Sociological Review, 21, 2: 149–163. Clarke, S. (2000) ‘The closure of the Russian labour market’, European Societies, 2, 4:483–504. ——(2002) Making Ends Meet in Contemporary Russia: Secondary Employment, Subsidiary Agriculture and Social Networks, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Fan, C., Overland, J. and Spagat, M. (1999) ‘Human capital, growth and inequality in Russia’, Journal of Comparative Economics, 27:618–643. Gallie, D., Gershuny, J. and Vogler, C. (1994) ‘Unemployment, the household and social networks’, in D.Gallie, C.Marsh and C.Vogler (eds) Social Change and the Experience of Unemployment, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Golod, S. and Kletsin, A. (1994) Sostoyanie i perspektivy razvitiya sem’i. Teoretikotipologicheskii analiz, St Petersburg: Filial IS RAN. Goskomstat (2002) Zhenshchiny i muzhchiny Rossii: statisticheskii sbornik, Moscow: Goskomstat. Granovetter, M. (1974) Getting a Job: A Study of Contacts and Careers, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Grogan, L. (2000) Labour Market Transitions in Eastern and Western Europe (Tinbergen Institute Research Series), Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam.


174

Kennedy, B., Kawachi, I. and Brainerd, E. (1998) ‘The role of social capital in the Russian mortality crisis’, World Development, 26, 11:2029–2043. Ledeneva, A. (1998) Russia’s Economy of Favours: Blat, Networking and Informal Exchange, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lonkila, M. (1999) Social Networks in Post-Soviet Russia: Continuity and Change in the Life of St. Petersburg Teachers, Helsinki: Kikimora Publications. Nazpary, J. (2002) Post-Soviet Chaos: Violence and Dispossession in Kazakhstan, London: Pluto Press. Omel’chenko, E. (2003) ‘Takie pokhozhe, takie raznye: stilevye profili i gendernye razlichiya trudovvykh strategii molodykh spetsialistov na rynke truda’, in L. Popkova and I.Tartakovskaya (eds) Gendernye otnosheniya v sovremennoi Rossii: Issedovaniya 1990 godov, Samara: Samara State University. Putnam, R. (2000) Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of the American Community, New York: Simon and Schuster. Rose, R. (1998) Getting Things Done in an Anti-Modern Society: Social Capital Networks in Russia (Studies in Public Policy, No. 304), Glasgow: University of Strathclyde/Centre for the Study of Public Policy. Rotkirch, A. (2000) The Man Question: Loves and Lives in Late 20th Century Russia, Helsinki: University of Helsinki. Salmi, A.-M. (2003a) ‘Neighbours and the everyday economy’, in K.-O.Arnstberg and T.Borén (eds) Everyday Economy in Russia, Poland and Latvia (Södertörn Academic Studies No. 16), Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell International, pp. 147–170. (2003b) ‘Health in exchange: teachers, doctors and the strength of informal practices in Russia’, Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 27:109–130. Yakubovich, V. and Kozina, I. (2000) ‘The changing significance of ties: an exploration of the hiring channels in the Russian transitional labor market’, International Sociology, 15, 3:479– 500. Yaroshenko, S.V. (2002) ‘Zhenskaya zanyatost’ v usloviyakh gendernogo i sotsial’nogo isklyucheniya’, Sotsiologicheskii zhurnal, 3:137–150.

7 Critical life events and downward trajectories Marina Ilyina

Life events of various sorts can have a critical impact on the labour market trajectories of individuals. This idea has received some recognition in the literature on transitional labour markets, particularly with regard to sickness and social risks, such as that of having an industrial accident (Wilthagen, 2002). Given the longitudinal nature of our data, we were able to construct ‘event histories’ of all our respondents during our research. We did so with two aims in mind. First, to see whether we could see a pattern of which events proved critical in both a positive and a negative sense, and, second, to see whether there were any gender differences in reactions to such events. Our analysis of ‘positive’ events—those which appeared to set in train upward trajectories in terms of employment and earnings—coincided largely with the findings of the chapter on the labour market. For example, securing supplementary employment was a positive event in the lives of men, while all forms of education and training had a positive impact on women. We therefore do not include these findings here, but have incorporated them into the chapter on labour market behaviour where appropriate.1 The critical life events which tended to have a negative impact, by contrast, were not dealt with elsewhere. Our analysis of these is presented below, with a focus on the way in which gender mediates the impact of events. We also recognise that personal character traits influence the way that people respond to challenges in their lives, but we focus more on the social conditions in which certain incidents set in train a downward trajectory. The life events we found to be significant were: health problems of the respondents or those close to them; alcohol abuse (both an event and a process); divorce, and military service. We deal with each of these in turn before drawing conclusions.

Health problems So everything good and bad is linked with health? Yes, perhaps it is. (4–17–4f)

‘Good health’ should be understood in this context as a condition allowing a person to live an active social and economic life. In Russia the 1990s brought radical changes which have had an overwhelmingly negative effect on the health of the population. Practically all of the current research into this problem reaches the same conclusion:


176

health and illness are to a significant extent socially conditioned. A deepening of social differentiation, a growth in poverty, outbreaks of social tension and the destruction of social support mechanisms have brought about dramatic changes in the health of Russians. One indirect indicator of this can be found in the growth of mortality among those of working age—precisely this group has turned out to be the most vulnerable, and the situation, according to experts’ evaluations, is close to catastrophe (Mille and Shkol’nikov, 1999; Demchenko, 2002). Living through the reform process and searching for a place and role in a new, rapidly changing society, have proved to be connected with a risk to life and health. Furthermore, in Russia a healthy lifestyle is practised in fairly narrow sections of the population. On the one hand, this is brought about by a scarcity of accessible social resources (the standard of living for the majority has fallen, the healthcare system has deteriorated, sanitary controls are weaker, and so on). These negative factors have a particularly strong effect at the bottom of the social scale. On the other hand, lifestyle is to a significant extent the result of free choice and the ability or potential to realise that choice. However, this cannot be called a purely subjective factor. Rather, lifestyles are structured by what Pierre Bourdieu calls ‘habitus’ (1990), that is, freely formed dispositions that arise as a result of the extended repetition of practices tied to the social position occupied. Family, school, friends and neighbours—these are all factors forming an individual’s habits, tastes and preferences. As a result, the social structure becomes individualised in character and dispositions. Health is partly inherited, and partly ‘earned’ by the individual, through socially structured lifestyle choices. Many of our respondents named illnesses as some of the most unfortunate events that took place over the two years of the research period. For all of them poor health was cited as a powerful demoralising force, preventing their progress up the social ladder. Practically all those who suffered serious illnesses or injuries during the research fell into our poor or socially excluded categories. Illness or accidents have the effect of blowing respondents off course, as can be seen in the following examples. One of our Samara respondents (3–10) who received sizeable compensation on being made redundant, intended, after taking six months off to rest and care for her sick son, to find an interesting and well-paid job (working abroad), and took specific steps to achieve this (although over 40 years old she started learning English, she actively looked for work through advertisements, the Internet, and acquaintances). She also earned money from casual work at every opportunity: My personal misfortune was to get hit by a car. And I suffered terribly after that: there was a man coming to see me from Sweden [a potential employer], who I was supposed to meet for an interview… And in December, just before New Year, I was hit by a car, and I ‘fell out of the loop’, and, well, for a long time I had concussion, and I have a wound that still hasn’t healed properly. (3–10–2) By the end of the research, her redundancy money was disappearing, and with it her hopes of getting ‘back in the loop’.

Critical life events and downward trajectories

177

The situation is made more complicated when the person affected by illness is already vulnerable. This can be seen in the case of one of our female respondents from Syktykvar (4–12, b. 1958) who had very limited social resources and was faced with disadvantages making her situation even more difficult (poor qualifications, the loss of her job, the lack of an accessible social network, a sick husband). In spite of these obstacles she tried to fight for her place in the sun: she earned money where she could while looking for a new job. When she fell seriously ill herself, towards the end of the research period, this put an end to her efforts: [Since then] my health has deteriorated… Now I just want to be able to carry on working here. Before I used to hope [to find a different job], but not now… If it wasn’t for my health, perhaps I’d think of that. But not any more… I’m not up to looking for work now, I just want to be able to last until I can draw my pension. (4–12–3) This respondent’s highest aspiration at the end of our research was to be registered disabled. Both men and women are vulnerable to illness and accidents, but there are gender differences in the level of risk. Among the middle-aged, health indicators show fundamental differences between men and women. These distinctions, noted by Russian researchers at the end of the 1970s and in the 1980s, were even more visible at the end of the 1990s (Rimashevskaya, 1999). At the end of 1994 life expectancy for men was fourteen years lower than that for women, and for all ages of adults adverse health indicators—the distribution of chronic illnesses, and the severity and multiplicity of illnesses—were lower for women. The basis of these difference lies, on the one hand, in genetic factors, and, on the other, on gender differences in lifestyle that exacerbate the genetic factors. A cavalier attitude to health, refusing to visit a doctor without a serious reason, the abuse of alcohol and tobacco, playing the role of breadwinner are all behaviours with associated risks, but which are important to supporting masculine status. The difference between patterns of alcohol consumption among men and women is so great that researchers talk of two ‘subcultures’ (Shurygina, 1996). The ‘male model’ presupposes fairly frequent consumption of strong spirits, and the ability to drink a great quantity is particularly valued, as is ‘not losing control’. For women, what is ‘acceptable’ is to drink lighter alcoholic drinks, on particular occasions. The factors that undermine men’s health vary among different men: for some it is excessive work (for examples, see Chapter 5), for others, excessive drinking. Occasionally these negative factors become entwined. The risks faced by men are well illustrated by the case of the following male respondent from Samara (3–03, b. 1958). During the Soviet era, he lived a carefree life: ‘Basically, I ran riot. I was well paid. So you get your wages, buy your groceries, and then I’d take the rest to the Sever [a restaurant]’ (3–3–1). The respondent spent three years in prison for hooliganism. At the first stage of our research he was unemployed and dreamed of ‘getting out of this poverty’ (3–3–2). In order to qualify for an early pension, he wanted to get a job in a factory with hazardous working conditions, as he had done in the Soviet era. He succeeded in this, and after a short spell there he managed to transfer


178

to a different company for significantly better pay. He recognised the risks of this strategy, commenting: Five years before time you’re off to the Rubezhka [the local cemetery]. Usually people finish their time in the ‘hot shop’ [a shop with hazardous conditions] and it’s straight off there. The air’s heavy, of course. Smoke, gas, gas pollution. It’s a health hazard. Towards the end of the research he developed a health problems which restricted his mobility. After six months in hospital, during which time his income was cut sharply (being on sick leave, he received none of his usual bonus payments), he was registered disabled. At the end of our research, the respondent, who had an income below the subsistence minimum, hoped to be registered as ‘working disabled’ (that is, with the right to work), and in an effort to ‘stake out’ his place was even prepared to work for no pay: All I want is not to be sitting at home, it would be nice to be able to go to work. I’d do it for nothing, I’d just help. I wouldn’t go where I’m not wanted, what’s the point in that? I wouldn’t do just exactly what I was supposed to and nothing more, I just want to help. (3–3–3) The prospects for a disabled labourer are not good, suggesting that this respondent may become permanently detached from the labour market (and hence confined to a life of poverty). Although the cause of his illness was not completely clear from the interview, it seems likely that it was related in some way to his high-risk lifestyle. Poverty increases the chances of illness, while the latter tends to intensify poverty. This is true for both men and women, though men appear to be at greater risk of ill-health because of the dangers inherent in many ‘masculine’ behaviours. At the same time, while men face a greater risk of early death, it should be stressed that illness is a risk event for both men and women.

Drunkenness and alcoholism It was all because of drunkenness that I’d leave [lose his job]. You just break loose, life gets you down, and management never likes that sort of thing. (4–2–4m)

This ‘social disease’ is worth describing in detail, in so far as it is a significant ‘event’ (or, rather, condition) that invariably leads ‘downwards’. Alcohol consumption is Russia is probably the highest in the world. The wide-scale anti-alcohol campaign that began in May 1985 led to only a brief respite, and by 1995 annual consumption per head of population had reached the equivalent of 14–15 litres of pure alcohol (Mille and Shkol’nikov, 1999). Over the past decade deaths in Russia attributable to alcoholism have


179

risen by 2–3.7 times (Demchenko, 2002). If deaths attributable to psychiatric breakdown resulting from chronic alcoholism are added, as well as poisonings, ‘other unspecified conditions’ and other illnesses caused by alcohol abuse, then it becomes clear that alcoholism and its consequences are dominant factors undermining the health and wellbeing of the nation. About half of the respondents who fell into our socially excluded category had serious problems with alcohol; only one was a woman. There is therefore reason to suppose that this is predominantly a male route to failure, and in many ways is engendered by masculine cultural tropes. Drinking strong spirits often becomes an inherent part of daily life, a ‘lifestyle choice’. As one of our respondents remarked, quoting his favourite saying, ‘There are many reasons for having a booze-up: funerals, birthdays, seeing off friends … And then there’s just a booze-up. For no reason’ (4–2–1). For example, ‘wetting’ their wages is a traditional ritual for many working-class men. Furthermore, this tradition then continues when they receive their pension. Even an anticipated future event can serve as a reason for taking a drink: Anyway, we went and had a look at it [a proposed new flat]. He says ‘Well, we ought to wet this.’ And I thought ‘Yes, we ought.’ So you decided to move house? No, that was just for the future. So what were you ‘wetting’ then? My future new flat, my proposed new flat. (2–29–4) However, mass drunkenness cannot simply be put down to tradition. The crises in Russia at the end of the twentieth century in the economy, culture, science, education and other social spheres brought about chronic stress for a large part of the population. Alcohol is often the ‘cure’ for this stress. Below we cite an extract from an interview with a relatively successful respondent (he ended up in our coping category). This makes his example all the more revealing: I’m going down. I’m going down. You see, I can’t even say it: my voice is shaking… And my health [is poor], and mentally I’m in a bad way. And work is bringing me down. It’s getting worse and worse. I’ve started drinking. Heavily… We drink while at work, and after work. Basically, it’s just that they’ve brought us to such a state where you’ve got nothing else. You need to relieve the stress somehow… I just can’t imagine how to get myself out of this pit. Either I’ll end up dying of hunger, or from alcohol, for sure. (3–2–3) Fortunately, this respondent overcame his ruinous habit and didn’t allow circumstances to gain the upper hand. However, for many people, drinking whether ‘for pleasure and fun’ or as a ‘medicine for adversity’ gradually becomes a habit and starts to give rise to social problems. Alcohol often leads to absenteeism, job losses, and the loss of professional skills. In the Soviet era, social drunkenness and alcoholism were no less widespread.


180

However, on the one hand this phenomenon was more tolerated at work, and, on the other, efforts were made to influence workers in some way, to reeducate them: they were admonished, reprimanded, in extreme cases sent away for the necessary treatment. In post-Soviet times alcoholism is no longer the concern of the collective, but has become exclusively the personal problem of the alcoholic. Those guilty of drunkenness at work, or of absenteeism after a heavy drinking session, are at most enterprises and organisations simply dismissed. Only valued employees are shown some tolerance. For people who are already socially vulnerable, the loss of their job is often the beginning of the end. For example, one law graduate (2–5) from our Ul’yanovsk sample could not get a job for a year. Having got one (in the public prosecutor’s office), he quickly lost it: he was dismissed for drunkenness. Consequently all those in his social circle completely lost touch with him: he disappeared, they say that he turned to drink completely. Drunkenness not only increases the risk of dismissal and serious injury, but also tears the perpetrator out of social networks that offer a chance of getting a new job. Sometimes the social circle is reduced to the drinker’s drinking partners. Information about the situation on the labour market is often limited to this circle. As one of our male respondents from Syktyvkar noted on being asked how he got information regarding work, ‘Well, when you’re drinking, you discuss it with your friends’ (4–22–1). Thus, systematic drunkenness leads to complete exclusion from wider society, locking an individual into social circles in which alcohol constitutes the main bond. All these problems are exacerbated by the health risks entailed in heavy drinking. This complex of factors is well illustrated by the case of another male respondent from Syktyvkar (4–49, b. 1956). As a result of alcohol abuse and multiple jail sentences, he developed a range of illnesses and eventually was registered disabled. Meanwhile, he had lost all desire to work. From his point of view ‘working outside prison is a sad necessity stipulated by the USSR constitution’ (4–49–1). Sometimes he and his drinking partners would ‘help’ state farm workers to clear the fields of the harvest (in other words, they stole food). They would then sell their spoils to the public at low prices. As our research progressed, his health did not permit him even this source of income. Another Syktyvkar respondent (4–25) suffered a particularly unhappy fate. As a result of poor health, he lost a job he enjoyed as an air steward. Thereafter, he began to drink, trying to make ends meet through casual earnings and by selling his possessions. At the second stage of our research, having lost his passport, he could no longer register at the employment and benefits office. He was living on his father’s pension and on earnings from casual jobs. During the fourth stage of our research he died from a heart attack during one of his regular drinking bouts. The health risks inherent in drinking, particularly binge drinking, were evident in the stories of many of our respondents. Another respondent (4–2) almost killed himself owing to unrestrained drunkenness (he tried to walk through a glass door); he severely injured his arm, which significantly hampered his ability to work. From the example of many of our respondents we can therefore see that people lose their jobs and qualifications, and fall to the bottom of the social hierarchy because of their excessive consumption of alcohol. However, it is obviously inadequate to limit our conclusion to the view that alcohol abuse—which primarily often begins as a harmful social habit—leads without fail to social exclusion. In the course of our analysis the following question is fundamental: do people drink because they have problems at work


181

or at home, or is drunkenness itself the reason for family or work problems? In other words: do we drink because we live badly, or do we live badly because we drink? Some of the examples above seem to show drunkenness as a cause, and the fall to the ‘bottom’ as a consequence. However, it must not be forgotten that it is often the respondent who rationalises the sequence of events in this order, and the researcher may be led along by the respondent, acquiescing in this logic. Furthermore, just as frequently, alcohol abuse among men is connected with deprivation brought about by complications in finding a job, the loss of social status, or by unsatisfactory work and pay. Both these perspectives can be seen the following exchange between an alcoholic husband (our respondent), and his long-suffering wife: Respondent: But everyone drinks, from Spiridonov [the head of the republic] down to the lowest street-sweeper. Everyone… I’ve lost almost all my friends, they all drank. They’re all dropping like flies, it’s terrible. And there are just no prospects because of that. Wife: It’s a man’s thing, basically… They drink out of despair, out of feeling unwanted. (4–2–4) What we are left with is a vicious circle. Dissatisfaction is drowned in drink; alcohol abuse then leads to a worsening in the respondent’s employment situation, a reduction in wages, family breakdown; the sense of deprivation increases as a result, leading to yet another drinking session. This recalls the tippler in Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, who is ashamed because he drinks, but drinks in turn because he is ashamed. Often into this pernicious cycle is added an event that aggravates the situation even more: a man who drinks loses the role of breadwinner, loses all authority in the household, not only does not bring money into the house but spends the last of the household’s budget on alcohol—and as a result loses his family. This, in turn, plays a fatal role in his sinking to the ‘bottom’.2 Many of our respondents in the ‘socially excluded’ category had trodden exactly this path. So far we have discussed only male drunkenness as a route down the social scale. However, this problem is not solely a male one. At the beginning of the twentieth century the ratio of men in Russia who drank compared to women who drank was 10 to 1. At the beginning of the twenty-first century some researchers estimate that this ratio has shrunk to 4 to 1 (Kostyuk, 2004). According to data from the Russian State Committee for Statistics (Goskomstat), over the past four years female deaths caused by alcoholism and its consequences have increased threefold. In 1995, 13,000 women died from alcohol poisoning. In 1996 the number of deaths from the same cause increased by almost 150 per cent (Belkin, 2002). In our sample the male/female ratio among those who have taken to drink stood at around 7 to 1, although this figure must be treated with caution, owing to the hidden nature of female alcoholism. In Russia female drunkenness has always been considered a disgrace. This is easily explained by means of Russian cultural traditions: for a man the ability to drink is a peculiar form of valour, whereas for women it is a sin, a source of shame. Therefore, the first steps towards alcohol dependency are taken most often in solitude, and always with a great deal of secrecy. There continues to be a social taboo over women drinking hard spirits, and therefore we may speak of the phenomenon of ‘underground’, ‘secret’ female alcoholism. This social taboo plays the role of a


182

peculiar filter, through which only the most serious forms of the illness are visible to specialists (whether narcologists, social workers or sociologists). Therefore it must not be forgotten that more visible cases—for example, female homeless alcoholics—may be just the tip of the iceberg. Let us return to our data. It is indicative that although our interviewers could diagnose male respondents as ‘alcoholics’ with some certainty, their comments with regard to women were more along the following lines: ‘Evidently she has problems with alcohol’, or ‘I have the impression that she drinks’. One female respondent (4–5–1), an unemployed mother of two, at the first stage of research met with the interviewer during what was evidently an extended drinking binge, about which she was even fairly defiant. At the second stage of research, she tried to break off contact with the researchers (she was ‘ashamed’). At the third stage she refused to meet the interviewers and therefore was removed from the data set. As a result of such secrecy, only one female respondent (4–44) was diagnosed as a ‘drinker’ with any certainty. It is no surprise that she was numbered among the group of ‘socially excluded’. Both sociologists and narcologists have long noted a gender divide in the causes of alcoholism. For women, it is more frequently connected with family problems. The reasons may be many, but there is a common theme: at some stage the woman undergoes psychological ‘strain’, and alcohol becomes a habitual companion and tranquilliser. This is what happened with our female respondent. Following the death of its breadwinner, the family remained without money, hope, and faith in the future: her life seemed to be breaking up. She turned to vodka as a salve, and consequently fell into the same vicious circle as the men above: alcohol abuse led to the loss of work, the stress increased, and was treated with more vodka… As a result, the respondent lost her good looks, and suffered dissatisfaction, loneliness, illnesses, new misfortunes. These latter conditions should be seen as a result of alcoholism rather than its cause. Our data does not challenge the view that alcoholism is primarily a male problem. Problems with drink often seal the fate of men who, because of other life events, have begun a downward trajectory. Nonetheless, it is evident that women are not immune from this social disease, and data from other sources suggest that with the strain of transition their use of alcohol may be increasing. The relaxation of social norms may also, as it has done in countries such as the UK, make it easier for women to drink ‘like men’. As in the case of men, this generally serves to block the road to recovery from other negative life events.

The illness of a close relative His illness bound me hand and foot. (3–10–3f)

The illness of a close relative can fundamentally change life strategies and practicalities. It demands the mobilisation of all kinds of resources: time, strength, often money. It places demands on time that can seriously affect employment and working life.


183

Such an illness is an external factor that changes the conditions of an individual’s life. However, its influence is not straightforward. The outcome is determined not just by this factor, but also by the individual’s personal potential, with the help of which the person tries to overcome the problems that have arisen. Therefore, for an individual with poor personal potential (entailing such things as health problems, a drinking problem, lack of self-control or organisational skills, a marked tendency to rely on outside help), the illness of a close relative can often be a socially destructive factor that demolishes social support systems that were in any case already precarious. There are also clear gender differences in the implications of the illness of a family members. Local gender norms dictate that women are obliged to concern themselves with the health family members, and to take on all the associated burdens. This can clearly be illustrated by two examples from Samara. The case of 3–10 was already mentioned. This respondent was initially held back by her own illness after she was hit by a car. But by the third stage of research her 18-year-old son’s depression was becoming the main barrier to her looking for work. The case of respondent 3–21 (b. 1945) is even more extreme, and illustrates the pressure on women to perform caring roles. The respondent concerned was still perfectly capable of working but, finding herself in straitened circumstances, nevertheless refused to look for work because of the necessity of helping to look after her son’s young children: Dima [her eldest son] just says, ‘You’re better coming to stay with us, helping us.’ It’s so hard for them that it’s impossible not to help. ‘We can’t get our children in anywhere yet [that is, in a kindergarten]. We’ll feed you all you want. You stay here for now, don’t bother looking for a job.’ For the last six months I’ve deliberately not being looking for work. (3–21–2) For two years she took care of her grandchildren, although she did not receive any material or moral support. ‘I thought, I shouldn’t have anything to do with that family [her eldest son’s family], they would cast me aside whether I did or not’ (3–21–3). Later her work with her son’s family increased, since his wife’s mother became bedridden. ‘I decided that I had to help them…, I thought that at that time it was my duty, so to speak’ (3–21–3). She felt that she had fulfilled her obligation towards her son, albeit at the expense of her own material well-being. ‘Every year you just sink lower and lower. I was thinking, anywhere else, for work like that [caring for an invalid] they might pay well, somewhere else I might be able to work and get paid for it’ (3–21–4). Thus, this respondent’s chances of finding a way out of poverty were ruined not by the illness of even a close relative, but that of an in-law to whom she felt unable to deny care. We have just described a frequent and very typical incident. Many female respondents suffered similar situations, although perhaps not in such concentrated form. The role of ‘keeper of the hearth’ and the carer for all who gather round it is not, as a rule, one conducive to success in life. Men’s obligation to provide care is not so strong, but the illness of a close relative can still have a powerful effect on them. In most of the cases in our data, it did not mobilise them but rather broke them down further. The reason was most often found in a predilection for drinking, which, as has already been noted, is predominantly a male


184

problem. Critical life events such as the illness of a close relative can provide the trigger for drinking to slip into alcoholism. It must be noted, however, that this is not universally the case. We did find one example in which a man was mobilised by the desire to care for his sick child, and this is unlikely to be an isolated incident. The life of the respondent concerned (4–20, b. 1969) had been greatly affected by his daughter’s cerebral palsy. ‘My daughter’s sick, I need to earn a lot, and I don’t have much faith in any help from the state. So I’m going to have to struggle. I don’t understand people who just give up’ (4–20–1). At the same time as looking for well-paid work and constantly earning from casual work doing network marketing (selling make-up and food additives), he was setting up an association for the parents of disabled children, in order to help people in similar situations. He hoped to give this a commercial aspect, to give parents the opportunity to earn money. During the research period he managed to carry out all the preliminary work and officially register the association. This example highlights the opening point regarding the way in which the impact of critical events is mediated not just through gender but also through ‘personal potential’ (such as self-esteem, organisational skills and networks). Even for those with fewer personal resources to draw on, the illness of a close relative can constitute an ‘opportunity’. As will be seen in the following examples, that it does so is largely a testament to poverty and a lack of decent labour market opportunities. For example, one young single mother (4–3, b. 1975) managed to extract some benefit from the illness of a close relative. The discovery that her brother had tuberculosis gave her the opportunity to place her 2-year-old son in a kindergarten-sanatorium, free of charge, where he enjoys a high-quality diet and enhanced medical care. Now [my brother] sits at home, getting high [note her evaluation of the situation]… And Zhenka [her son], as someone at risk of contact with him, they immediately placed him in a free kindergarten-sanatorium. He gets fed for nothing there, and very well too. It’s a sanatorium too, so as well as not having to pay anything for him, I don’t have to feed him either… He’s fed and looked after by the kindergarten, they really fatten them up, we’re actually getting quite used to chocolate and oranges. (4–3–3) The boy could stay at the kindergarten five days a week. Having received such a ‘gift’ from the state, the woman willingly left work for six months, ‘to rest’, as she put it. Her job search activities were virtually non-existent—although her reluctance to re-enter the labour market was understandable given her assessment of the sort of work available to her (washing dishes, working as a market stall-holder for long hours and low pay). As she explained in the final interview, ‘you can’t buy back your health’ in the event of it being damaged by such work. This case highlights the way in which deprivation leads tragedies to be transformed into survival strategies. As the respondent discussed said of her friend (with almost envious approval): ‘Her baby’s father was killed in Chechnya, so she has this certificate, and with this certificate they have to take her in wherever she goes.’ Another variation on the same strategy can be seen in the case of another woman from Syktyvkar (4–12, b. 1958). It was an important part of her survival strategy that her husband was awarded ‘group two’ (unable to work) disability status, because in that case


185

the family would be guaranteed a regular (although minimal) income: his pension. When he was assigned ‘group three’ status (able to work), she insisted on the matter being put to appeal: So it’s more profitable for your husband to be on a disability pension? Of course. He would never get a job for more than 200 roubles a month. And the pension always gets paid on time. (4–12–3) Respondent 3–10 discussed above likewise wanted to get her son registered disabled, for similar reasons. As these examples highlight, the illness of a close relative can be turned into a resource. Just as in other economies affected by high unemployment, in the absence of decent jobs, disability pensions and other state resources become a crucial element in the survival strategies of individuals.3 The downside of this, however, is that individuals become detached from the labour market, and cut themselves off from anything other than the security-in-poverty offered by Russian state benefits. The illness of a close relative is thus a risk factor for both men and women— threatening to trap women in a caring role which condemns them to poverty, and adding to the pressures which can lead to male demoralisation and drunkenness. Occasionally it provides a ‘push’ towards activism, but this is far more likely to happen in the case of the already-advantaged. The disadvantaged may secure additional state benefits as a result of the misfortune of their relatives, but since this has the capacity to cement labour market detachment, it cannot be seen as an unqualified benefit.

Military service That time is lost… And now I don’t know what to do, how to occupy myself. (2–29–4m)

For understandable reasons, this life event is clearly gendered, since women are not conscripted into the Russian army. We have observed that for young men, serving in the armed forces is often not only a two-year interruption or delay in education and career paths, and a period where the development of professional skills is put on hold—that is, a pause—but often a ‘step backwards’. Three of our Ul’yanovsk graduates were called up to do their military service during the research, and their experiences on their return form the basis of the discussion below. The dangers of serving in the Russian army are well known. First, there is the obvious hazard of being sent to a war zone, with the attendant risk of death or witnessing dehumanising horrors. Second, there is the phenomenon widely known as dedovshchina— that is, bullying and violent initiation ceremonies. According to the findings of one recent study, over half of those who had served, or the friends or relatives of those who had served, had come into contact with bullying in the army (Armiya i ya…2003:250). In the Russian army violence has become firmly established as a form of interpersonal


186

communication, This leads to the transformation of consciousness, as Bannikov (2002) has demonstrated. And, as the stories of our respondents reveal, even those who escaped the worst of these dangers were damaged by compulsory military service. There are various reasons why military service in Russia has such negative consequences. First, army life is based on instilling discipline, which often has the effect of neutralising an individual’s creative capacity. A good soldier is a cog on a huge wheel; he is not meant to think about strategy. A huge proportion of the minutiae of everyday life (when to get up, wash, have a bath, what and how to eat, and so on) is decided by his commanders. Moreover, it is well known that in the Russian army work is not so much a means of survival and maintaining combat readiness as a means of social control and subordination. Such a repressive work regime cannot give rise to positive motivation. Motivation is only cultivated by activity that makes sense to the person doing it. Work to which a person is indifferent ‘is a surrogate, and leads to very harmful consequences’ (Asmolov, 1996:422). The soldier is mainly occupied with domestic routine—which is often meaningless, in so far as it is not clear why he is serving in the army: in order to maintain the security of the state, or in order to maintain the smooth running of the army itself. Researchers are therefore justified in talking of the corrupting nature of army work (Bannikov, 2002:88). Forced labour can break a person, and in this sense the army can be compared with prison or prison camps. In this way, the official system of compulsory military service, which deprives a person of freedom in all its forms and provides no stimulus to carry out the service effectively, returns to civilian life a person who has often lost the ability to develop an independent employment strategy. Therefore, the return from the military is for many a culture shock: they have to relearn how to live by their own wits, and to take full responsibility for their own life. In this sense, the moment of return constitutes a risky ‘critical life event’. As one of our respondents explained: In the army I would get up in the morning and know that the next thing I did would be to go to the mess. After the mess I would be doing something in the warehouse. But now I get up at ten o’clock and don’t know what to do, how to occupy myself. (2–29–4) In line with this, our respondents appeared to be paralysed on their return from army service. They were angry, frustrated and lost, and took the traditional Russian ‘medicine’ for such complaints with the usual consequences, as can be seen in the case studies below. The graduate of the Ul’yanovsk Pedagogical College (2–29) quoted above, who had worked for a short time in a village school (a job to which he was allocated after graduating), had no intention of working according to his previous speciality after his military service, explaining that he was studying in order to enter higher education. He did not appear to be doing so, however, and seemed listless and without purpose. He called his idleness ‘forced and temporary’, but he was very passive in his search for a job, even for casual work. To a question about the role of the army in his life, he answered:


187

I think that it takes away…a person’s freedom… It did nothing useful for me at all… So it was wasted time, the time you spent in the army? Yes. That’s right, it took the time away from me, that’s all the army did. (2–29–4) The case of respondent 2–33 is even more striking. He was graduate of an electrical engineering college (an automobile repair and technical service mechanic) and served in a repair and renovation battalion, so was not threatened by de-skilling. Moreover, in the evenings he was able to make casual earnings by repairing cars. However, on returning from the army, for a long time he did not work (and was not looking for work), apparently preparing to go into higher education. He remembers the army as ‘a terrible dream’ (2–33–4), and was bitter about the lack of support he received on his return: For two years I’ve been paying a debt that I never borrowed in the first place, and the state has given me nothing for it. No job-resettlement, nothing… Now that I’m back they’re not giving out any benefits or anything… When I left [for the army], the farm would hand out benefits for those coming back from the army, or who hadn’t passed their exams or something. It was all a lot simpler, but now, as far as I understand it, these benefits don’t exist any more. (2–33–4) This sense of dislocation was exacerbated by the prolonged celebrations he enjoyed on his return: At that time I was never completely sober, in fact most of the time I was very drunk. I just lost it, I drank anything and everything. If there was beer, then I drank beer; if there was vodka, then I drank vodka. (2–33–4) Unfortunately, he was unable to exit this state and at the end of our research by his own acknowledgement and also in the interviewer’s judgement, he remained on an extended drinking binge. As has been noted above, such binges are very dangerous, and can in some cases lead to sudden death through heart or other organ failure. Both the respondents who finished their military service during the research period ended up, after their return from the army, in the group of ‘socially excluded’. Their plans to continue their education had not disappeared, but they had taken on a certain illusory aspect; the rest-period after ‘demob’ dragged on and turned into unemployment. Analysis of their cases suggests that the risks involved in this transition are threefold. First, military service itself can often be a negative experience—spirit-breaking if not fatal— which renders those who return socially vulnerable. Second, the return home marks a disorientating disjunction, and state support to ensure successful re-integration into civilian life is currently inadequate. Finally, popular rituals marking the return from the army exacerbate all the risks of this period. Endless gatherings with friends and


188

acquaintances are accompanied by hard drinking. Idleness, a refusal to find work quickly, is legitimised by friends, and by the necessity of resting after the army. Sometimes, as the case of respondent 2–33 reveals, the ‘relaxation’ is so long and drawnout that it can be hard to end it. Military service therefore represents a particular social risk faced only by young men. It should also be noted that it represents a greater risk for poorer men. The sons of more well-to-do parents rarely serve in the army, while those from less advantaged backgrounds have their disadvantage compounded after completing their military service. Military service can therefore also be seen as a mechanism of ‘class reproduction’.

Divorce Now it’s probably better… Now I’m on my own and I know exactly what we need. (4–1–4f)

Everywhere the modern family is in deep crisis. The old family model evidently does not accord with today’s socio-cultural realities, and the new forms are struggling to take shape. One of the signs of the crisis is the high level of divorce. The traditional monogamous marriage (one partner for life) is quickly being transformed into serial monogamous marriage: one partner, but only at any given moment, and several such partners in a lifetime. In Russia this universal crisis is exacerbated by the socio-economic crisis. Relations between spouses often depend on the level of material well-being: the higher that is, the better the relations. Among poorer families, around one-fifth are characterised by strained relations, frequent arguments and conflicts that often lead to divorce (Rimashevskaya, 1999). This is only natural: poverty makes resolving everyday problems more complicated, makes working out the family budget a stressful task. As a result, a huge number of basic everyday family practicalities are liable to lead to conflict. The impact of divorce on women has been widely discussed because of the growth of single-parent families, the vast majority of which are headed by mothers. Researchers see the presence of dependants as a determining factor in the incidence of poverty, when looking at the objective preconditions that give rise to poverty (Ovcharova, 1994). The heightened risk of poverty for single mothers is not least connected with insufficient and often irregular payments of alimony. In addition, men often not only avoid providing material support for their children, but also try to avoid taking part in their upbringing. According to recent research, only one-third of men, judging from their own replies, see their children fairly often and are to some extent involved with their upbringing. Women talk of a lack of relations between fathers and their children twice as frequently (Prokof’eva and Valetas, 2002). Material support for the children, as well as participation in their upbringing, depends more and more on the goodwill of fathers and is poorly controlled by state institutions, which increases the uncertainty and instability of quality of life for one-parent families headed by divorced mothers. Having said this, however, divorce does not necessarily have a negative impact on women—and indeed, our female respondents who divorced during our study generally


189

viewed this as a positive development. There were two main reasons for this: that their former husbands had problems with drink and/or were unreliable providers. The first instance can be illustrated by the case of a female respondent from Samara (3–40, b. 1958). She divorced her husband, on whom she had been dependent for many years, during our research. Her motivation for divorce was that she did not want to live with a husband who drank, and who took no part in looking after the home. She planned to find a good job and earn her own living independently: ‘I got fed up of being a housewife in the shadow of someone else’ (3–40–3). Her situation was complicated by the fact that she had to undergo a serious operation, which prevented her from finding a well-paid job (her monthly salary at the end of the research period was below the subsistence minimum at 1,000 roubles). Nevertheless, she continued to build her plans on the basis of finding well-paid work that would provide her with an independent life. She stated with certainty that the divorce was the best thing that had happened to her during the research period. Similarly certain that her divorce had improved her life was respondent 4–45 whose marriage breakdown (caused by her husband’s alcoholism) was discussed in Chapter 2. This is not surprising. Even if the family’s material situation remains unchanged or deteriorates in such cases, its members are allowed a more normal life without having to suffer the drunken excesses of the father. Another benefit can be that women find it easier to manage the budget once the husband has gone, even if this results in a reduction in household income per head. In the case of men who drink, expenditure on alcohol and tobacco is curtailed. Even in cases of non-drinkers the situation can be eased. This was the case with the young mother (4–1). She was forced into divorce not so much by her husband’s infidelity as by the fact that, having started to earn a good wage, he began to spend money not on his children but on his lover: He said that he wouldn’t give me any money, but it seems that this woman is from the provinces, she had no nice clothes, so he…spent money on clothes for her, and didn’t leave any money for the children, so I decided, if you’re going to do that, then I don’t want your money. (4–1–4) Prior to her divorce, this respondent had completely patriarchal notions, and was oriented exclusively towards finding ‘convenient’ work that would allow her to spend more time on bringing up her children and looking after the home: ‘Daddy will earn the money’ (4– 1–1). Having taken on the responsibility for the family’s material well-being, she changed her outlook: she displayed an uncharacteristic level of activity, trying to get a job as a stallholder at the market, and finding casual work in her own field (as a seamstress). At the same time she stressed that, as before, she gave a lot of attention to her children. She considered the family’s material situation to have improved: Now it’s probably better. When we lived together, when he brought his wages home, he always used to say, ‘I owe such-and-such-a-body, I owe such-and-such-a-body else’, and it always worked out that there was never enough money. But now I’m on my own and I know exactly what we need.


190

(4–1–4) Thus, women are often energised by divorce, and pushed into relying on their own resources. Over the long term, this can be tough going (see the case study of respondent 3–33 in Chapter 4), but nonetheless, as will be seen, it is less damaging than the route followed by many divorced men. Turning to men, it is easy to suppose that a man who has broken the marital chain, in addition to enjoying his newly found freedom, also has the opportunity to spend his money and time as he likes. Even the obligation to pay alimony cannot completely lighten his wallet, since the Russian labour market offers the possibility of working in the ‘shadow’ economy of secondary employment, free from alimony as well as taxes. Working in the shadow economy as a means of avoiding alimony is actively used by divorced men, who are afraid that the alimony will be spent uncontrollably by the divorced wife—and not only on the children. Therefore men often pay alimony from their official pay-cheque, seeing all their other casual earnings as an ‘untouchable reserve’. However, in the poorest sectors of society divorce tends to result in more losses than gains. What kind of men do the women that we have described divorce? ‘Failures, drinkers, men who can’t feed the family, or take responsibility for it.’ Therefore, once he has his freedom, such a man tends not to use his new-found additional resources on his own social development, but, on the contrary, starts to drink more (since there is no one to hold him back), and naturally descends even lower down the social scale. One respondent from Syktykvar (4–22) passed through all the stages of this route: alcoholism, de-skilling, divorce. During the research period he changed his status several times: for a time he was unemployed (although not registered for benefits); he was a security guard for a private enterprise; he earned his living from casual odd-jobs repairing televisions and other appliances. His drinking cut off the possibility of a permanent job: he did not even apply, fearing in advance being sacked for drunkenness. Thus, the consequences of divorce in the poorer sectors of society are often genderspecific. Divorce frees the woman from her husband/burden, pushing her into searching for a survival strategy, at the basis of which lies a reliance on her own strength and on the revitalised family budget. The man/ alcoholic, deprived of his family, by contrast, tends to be pushed into a more rapid decline.

Conclusion For our respondents, health was an important factor not only with respect to downward mobility, but also as a crucial resource of those attempting to move up the social ladder. Ill health can trap individuals whose situation is already precarious, rendering it very difficult for them to escape poverty. This applies to both men and women, though men seem to be at greater risk of ill-health than women. By far the most significant form of ‘ill-health’ in our data was the social disease of alcoholism, which can be both a reason for and a consequence of social marginality. Other events—military service, the illness of a relative, divorce—do not necessarily result in downward mobility. Rather, the effect of such events is mediated by the social and personal resources of an individual as well as by gender in the case of the latter two


191

events. In all cases, men’s tendency to turn to drink in times of trouble increases the risk that the event will set them on a downward trajectory. This risk is social rather than individual in the sense that men’s drinking habits are part of a culture of masculinity in which most life events are marked or mourned with a drink. The potentially damaging tradition of binge drinking on return from military service is a good example of this social risk. Women are not immune to turning to drink in adversity but their doing so is not socially encouraged. The shame attached to hard drinking by women may therefore serve to protect them somewhat—although it also may also mean that the full extent of female alcoholism is underestimated. There are other social factors which may offer women protection, however, such as their role in the household discussed in Chapter 2, and the durability of their social networks in times of distress discussed in the previous chapter. Overall, our data suggest that women are better able to weather critical life events, and this may help explain why, though they tend to be poorer than men, they are less vulnerable to the demoralisation and drinking which can lead to early death.

Notes 1 The analysis of positive events was carried out by Natalya Goncharova. 2 For an example of this, see the case of Lida and her husband described in Chapter 2. 3 A classic example is the growth of the number of men receiving various kinds of disability benefit (as opposed to unemployment benefit) in Western Europe during the deindustrialisation of the late 1970s and 1980s. For a review of the evidence, see Yeandle (2003).

References Antonova, O.I. (1999) Sovremennaya demograficheskaya situatsiya v Rossiiskoi Federatsii: Materialy Rossiiskogo statisticheskogo agentstva, Moscow. Armiya i ya: Matierialy sotstioligicheskogo issledovaniia, situatsiya, pis’ma, vyskazyvaniya (2003), St Petersburg. Asmolov, A.G. (1996) Kul’turno-istoricheskaya psikhologiya i konstruirovanie mirov, Moscow, Voronezh. Bannikov, K. (2002) Antropologiya ekstremal’nykh grupp: dominantnye otnosheniya sredi voennosluzhashchikh srochnoi sluzhby Rossiiskoi Armii, Moscow. Belkin, Y. (2002) ‘Kukushkiny deti’, Russkii dom, 12. Bourdieu, P. (1990) The Logic of Practice, Cambridge: Polity Press. Demchenko, T.A. (2002) ‘Tendentsii smertnosti v Rossii 90-kh godov’, Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya, 10:109–113. Kostyuk, Y. (2004) ‘Vozgonka po vertikali’, Profit, 1. Lunyakova, L.G. (2001) ‘O sovremennom urovne zhizni semei odinokikh materei’, Sotstiologicheskie issledovaniya, 8:86–95. Materialy Rossiiskogo statisticheskogo agentstva (1999) Moscow: 10. Mille, F. and Shkol’nikov, V.F. (1999) ‘Smertnost’ v Rossii: zatianuvsheesya otstavanie’, Mir Rossii, 14:138–162. Ovcharova, L.N. (1994) ‘Sotsial’naya struktura bednykh semei i faktory, privedshie k bednosti’, Bednost’: vzglyad uchenykh na problemu, Moscow, pp. 224–237. Prokof”eva, L.M. and Valetas, M.-F. (2002) ‘Otsy i ikh deti posle razvoda’, Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya, 6:111–115.


192

Rimashevskaya, N.M. (1999) ‘Gendernye otnosheniya na sovetskom i post-sovetskom prostranstve razvitiya Rossii’, Zhenshchina, gender, kul’tura, Moscow. Shurygina, I.I. (1996) ‘Razlichiya v potreblenii alkogolya muzhchinami i zhensh-chinami’, Sotsiologicheskii zhurnal, 1–2:169–176. Wilthagen, T. (2002) ‘Managing social risks with transitional labour markets’, in H. Mosely, J.O’Reilly, and K.Schömann (eds) Labour Markets, Gender and Institutional Change: Essays in Honour of Günther Schmid, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Yeandle, S. (2003) ‘The international context’, in P.Alcock, C.Beatty, S.Fothergill and S.Yeandle Work to Welfare: How Men Become Detached from the Labour Market, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Conclusion Sarah Ashwin

Russia’s attempted economic transformation has been a traumatic experience. As this book has shown, men and women have responded differently to the challenges thrown up by their new environment. Employment outcomes have also varied by gender, though the extent to which this results from differences in male and female behaviour is, as will be discussed below, open to question. In economic terms, men have preserved and perhaps even increased their labour market advantage. In social terms, however, women have proved themselves to be more adaptable than men, and less susceptible to demoralisation, despair, drink, and, ultimately, early death. We have argued that the key to understanding this somewhat paradoxical outcome lies in the household division of labour and its associated norms. What has our study contributed to understanding the preservation of male advantage during the transition? In terms of male behaviour, we have found a number of ways in which the prevailing gender order serves to stimulate men to advance themselves economically. First, the male breadwinner norm is a powerful spur. Men are expected to be the primary earners and their status within the household is dependent on them fulfilling this role. This acts as a major incentive to labour market activism. Notably, attached to men’s role as primary breadwinners is the duty to supplement household income where necessary through secondary employment. This underlies the fact that, as explored in Chapter 5, men are significantly more likely to be involved in supplementary employment than women. Moreover, as Svetlana Yaroshenko and her team show, the additional income from such work often has a major impact on male earnings, lifting them out of poverty, and often into relative comfort. In terms of job mobility, the implications of the breadwinner norm are more mixed, with some men restlessly searching for better opportunities, and others, as discussed in Chapter 4, cautiously clinging onto what are perceived as stable jobs. Nevertheless, maintaining or maximising earnings is a major concern for most men, aside from a few devoted professionals, discussed in Chapter 4, who give priority to their attachment to a particular line of work When we turn to look at women’s behaviour, the main distinguishing feature is, as mentioned above, that they are less likely to be involved in secondary employment. Meanwhile, women, because of the benefits to which they were entitled as mothers in the Soviet era, have greater experience of drawing on state resources. Since application for benefits is perceived to be linked to women’s role as household managers, there is also no stigma attached to them seeking state support. For this reason, as argued in Chapter 5, women have been more likely to draw on state benefits than men, as can be seen in the fact that while male and female unemployment rates as measured by the Labour Force Survey have been roughly equal, women have always made up a greater proportion of the registered unemployed. Thus, in 2002 the female registered unemployment rate stood at 2.6 per cent, as opposed to 1.1 per cent for men (Goskomstat, 2003:130). In other areas,


194

however, our data revealed only small differences in male and female behaviour. In our sample, the women were actually more mobile than the men. Although we do not claim that this finding is generalisable to Russia as a whole, it does mean that our male respondents’ superior outcomes cannot be explained by their greater mobility. Meanwhile, men and women were equally likely in our data to engage in education and training, so this again does not aid understanding of our male respondents’ labour market advantage. Thus, the main behavioural differences between men and women in our data relate to secondary employment and the use of state resources. Meanwhile, Sveta Yaroshenko and her colleagues estimate that men are becoming more prone to apply for state benefits over time, so the latter difference may be gradually eroded. As will be seen below, it seems unlikely that these behavioural differences account for men’s superior economic outcomes. One further aspect of behaviour needs to be examined, however. While women may be as mobile than men, they also display more readiness to accept low pay than their male counterparts. That is, differing aspirations could mean that the implications of male and female labour market activism are different. We do not exclude this, although we argue that women’s lower expectations have to be seen in the context of the structural constraints facing them, which we examine below. Moreover, there is a flip-side to women’s readiness to accept poor pay. It helps explain why Russian unemployment does not, as predicted, have a ‘female face’: however biased they may be against women, employers offering low wages know that they are only likely to get female applicants. Men, by contrast, display less flexibility with regard to pay and status. While this means that they are less likely to settle for low quality jobs, men’s higher standards also carry with them a greater risk of labour market detachment. The heroic rigidity of Volodya (4– 35, b. 1964) discussed in Chapter 4 provides a striking example of this process. Our study focused on men’s and women’s reaction to economic change, but Chapters 2 and 3 also make a contribution to understanding the structural constraints they face. Recent sociological theory has stressed the role played by what Cecilia Ridgeway calls ‘gender status beliefs’ in the conservation of inequality (1997). Such beliefs, which accord women a lower value, influence the distribution of resources in a society, so that ‘while cultural beliefs about gender are indeed stereotypes, they have a substantially broader social significance than our common understanding of the phrase suggests’ (Ridgeway and Correll, 2004:511). Beliefs about the competence, status and worth of men and women have a pervasive influence on social interaction, so that decisions such as hiring, promotion and wage setting are all shaped by them. For example, the feminist economists Deborah Figart and her colleagues have shown the way in which ‘social and cultural assumptions’ interact with market forces and government regulation in the process of setting male and female wages (2002:4). In this sense, social structure ‘can be understood as jointly constituted by the cultural rules or schemas by which it is enacted, and the distribution of resources that result’ (Ridgeway and Correll, 2004:511, following Sewell, 1992). In Chapters 2 and 3 we provided detailed accounts of the cultural beliefs and norms which structure the behaviour of men and women in Russia. We argue that women’s domestic role has had a decisive influence in shaping local cultural beliefs regarding gender difference. Sociological theorists are still trying to specify the nature of the interdependence between the household division of labour and inequality in employment

Conclusion

195

(Ridgeway, 1997:232). Our understanding of this link in Russia is relatively straightforward. Women’s integration into the Soviet labour force was not accompanied by a re-evaluation of their domestic and maternal roles, which continued to be perceived as naturally-occurring feminine duties (Ashwin, 2000). Women’s status as employees was therefore defined by their prior domestic identities. This led them to be seen as ‘special’ workers, who were not primarily focused on work and were therefore of lesser value. This interpretation is supported by evidence from other contexts which shows the way in which women’s domestic and care-giving roles damage their standing as employees. For example, Ridgeway and Correll cite recent experiments in the US which demonstrate that simply adding the phrase ‘has a two-year-old child’ to a woman’s CV ‘reduces evaluators’ estimates of her competence…suitability for hiring and promotion and the wages she should be paid’. The same phrase has no impact on evaluations of men (2004:526). In Soviet Russia, women’s role as mothers and ‘potential mothers’ was continually stressed in ways which meant that female employees were always likely to be perceived in relation to the assumed characteristics of mothers. It was also taken-forgranted that women would be combining work with domestic duties (which indeed they usually were). The corollary of this is the way in which men’s role as primary breadwinners has underlain men’s perceived entitlement to higher wages both in Russia and elsewhere. As Irina Kozina and Elena Zhidkova demonstrate in Chapter 3, these assumptions have not helped women. In contemporary Russia, gender status beliefs and what Figart et al. call ‘implicit wage theories’ (2002:4) continue to be structured by women’s historic association with the domestic sphere. As was shown in Chapter 3, our study found little dissent from the assumption that men make superior employees. In our sample, both young and old, men and women, concurred that men were more committed and flexible, possessed greater initiative, creativity, intelligence and strength, and enjoyed a greater capacity to take risks. There was also a perception that men ‘deserved’ higher wages because of their role as main breadwinners. These beliefs influence gender differences in earnings in three ways. First, they shape the expectations of men and women, so that, as discussed above, women are more likely to accept low wages. Secondly, in a slack, poorly-regulated labour market employers are free to act on their prejudices, which can be assumed to be informed by the taken-for-granted biases against women that pervade the rest of Russian society. Men will therefore be the employees of choice for the betterpaid types of employment. Thirdly, analysis of data from the US has shown that, even after human capital, skill demands and working conditions have been controlled for ‘those who work in occupations with more females earn less’ as a result of ‘wage discrimination against female occupations’ (England et al., 1988:554). The same discrimination against female dominated areas of the economy is also evident in Russia (Katz, 2001). In this way, the self-sorting of employees into what they perceive to be gender-appropriate work, along with discrimination in hiring and wage setting, ensure that men are on average better paid than women, not only in their main jobs, but also in their secondary employment. Much of this can be traced back to the taken-for-granted assumption that women are second class workers. Meanwhile, the same set of beliefs regarding gender difference and the desirability of men and women as employees will be salient in the gender restructuring of employment during transition. The evidence presented in Chapter 3 suggests that this process is


196

benefiting men. Men’s share of employment is increasing in the best-paid branches of the economy such as banking which were previously female-dominated, while women appear to be squeezed out of a number of ‘male’ areas of the economy, such as construction, to which they had access during the Soviet era. It also appears to be more difficult for women to gain work in the new private sector. The gender structure of the Russian labour market which results from the social bias against women means that men have more opportunities in both the primary and secondary labour markets. One indication of this is that, as was shown in Chapter 5, in our sample men’s routes to a decent income were more varied than those of women. While over 70% of women in our comfortable category (with an income above their regional average wage) had higher education, only half of men in this category enjoyed this advantage. Many of the men in this group were semi-skilled and were able to secure a decent income through performing lucrative supplementary employment. While it proved possible for a man with no education, a chequered work history and a drink problem, such as Georgii (3–50, b. 1960), to enter our comfortable category through his second job as a loader, we encountered no cases of a woman with his disadvantages securing similar economic returns. This difference relates both to the fact that women need do more to prove their competence (and thus have a greater need of formal qualifications), and to wage discrimination against female occupations, which means that unskilled male professions are better paid than their female equivalents. Finally, men’s overall advantage begets further gains because of the operation of networks. As highlighted in Chapter 6, over two-thirds of jobs in Russia are now secured through connections, and those with the most effective contacts will therefore be likely to obtain the best jobs. Networks are strongly segregated by gender, meaning that men tend to get jobs through other men, women through women. Since men tend to predominate in better-paid areas, the operation of networks will serve to reinforce their labour market advantage. The structural reasons for men’s continued labour market advantage are therefore profound, and we would suggest that they outweigh any differences in behaviour in accounting for men’s superior outcomes during the transition era. In periods of dramatic transformation, the economic power of dominant groups is open to challenge, but this did not occur in the case of Russian men. We would argue that men were able to preserve their labour market advantage because of the stability of norms and beliefs which served to guide the behaviour of employers and employees, men and women, during the reform era. As shown in Chapter 2, the normative structure of the Soviet gender order remained intact in the face of the collapse of its institutional underpinnings, and for this reason the gender distribution of resources was, in relative terms, undisturbed by the economic collapse of the 1990s.1 Moreover, the behavioural differences we identified can in turn be traced back to the norms of the Soviet era. Women’s tendency to draw on state resources is related to their responsibility for managing household budgets, while men’s greater propensity to engage in supplementary work is linked to their perceived duties as primary breadwinners. Such differences may be strengthened by the opportunity structure confronting men and women, in which men have more chance of finding well-paid supplementary work, while women have fewer alternatives to seeking state support. In line with these arguments, we reject any notion that women’s labour market disadvantage

Conclusion

197

can be explained by their ‘innate’ preferences, since even the key behavioural differences can be accounted for by social factors.2 We have argued that the norms and assumptions that underlie women’s disadvantage are strongly informed by the domestic division of labour. Men’s association with the world of work enhances their opportunities in the labour market, while women’s link to the household is the source of much of the bias against them. But this is not the whole story. There is a duality to women’s role in the household, which has had important implications during a period of economic crisis. While it may have been a ‘burden’ to women, their domestic role has also served a protective function, the nature of which we outline below. First, as argued in Chapter 2, women’s role in the household gives them a source of efficacy and meaning outside the world of work. This can make it easier for them to cope with the psychological effects of unemployment or downward mobility. The case studies of committed professionals in Chapter 4 provide an example of this. A woman such as Tamara (4–13, b. 1964) was greatly distressed by the closure of her beloved enterprise, but retained her composure as a result of the satisfying and happy family relations in which she was embedded. Her role as carer for her mother and son appeared to provide her with an alternative source of meaning which made her low-status work as a hospital orderly bearable. By contrast, the unemployed pilot Volodya (4–35, b. 1964), though he claimed during the first interview that his family kept him going, was not ready to make the professional compromise required for him to fulfil his expected role as main breadwinner. He was unable to countenance working in another profession, even though he acknowledged he had no chance of finding work as a pilot in the face of the devastating decline of domestic aviation. Meanwhile, his role as breadwinner constituted his main link to the household, so unemployment rendered him domestically redundant. By the end of the research he had been divorced by his wife and was dangerously demoralised. The apparent futility of his postdivorce attempt to woo his wife back through intensive home-improvement only serves to highlight the marginality of men within the household. Secondly, while men benefit from connections with other men who are likely to be in better-paid areas of the economy, women derive other benefits from their networks. As was shown in Chapter 6, women’s embeddeness in household-centred networks means that they are less likely to be left isolated by events such as job loss. Exchange of everyday domestic objects binds women together, while their common status as household managers means that work-related status issues are less likely to disrupt their relations. Men’s relations, by contrast, tend to be focused on work, and more influenced by social status. This can mean that men’s networks are rendered vulnerable at precisely those moments when they are most needed. This is a particular risk for single men who are unable to draw on their partners’ networks. Men who face labour market difficulties such as unemployment or downward mobility thus face a greater risk of demoralisation than women for three reasons. First, men’s main role in the household is that of primary breadwinner, and a failure to perform this duty leaves them vulnerable to exclusion from the household (Ashwin and Lytkina, 2004). Secondly, given men’s marginal role in the household, and the underdevelopment of the civic sphere and leisure infrastructure in Russia, it is difficult for men to find meaning and validation outside the world of work. Finally, their social networks are more fragile


198

than those of women in times of distress. This helps explain why men tend to react to stressful events by seeking solace in a bottle. But while alcohol may lessen feelings of pain or anxiety, it usually exacerbates the problems from which relief was originally sought. Women are less vulnerable to the isolation which can push men into alcoholism, but they are also protected by the cultural norms surrounding alcohol consumption, discussed in Chapter 7, which proscribe heavy drinking in women, but encourage it in men. Russia’s drinking culture thus adds a lethal element to the cocktail of risks which attend men’s marginality within the household. Men who turn to drink in the face of labour market and family problems are those most at risk of early death, as was shown by the tragic fates of our respondents Sasha (4–25, b. 1968) and Alexei (4–56, b. 1968), both of whom died before the end of our research. Women have therefore proved better at ‘surviving’ the transformation in the literal sense, despite the fact that men have retained their labour market advantage. Poor men have, as Burawoy et al. argue, suffered ‘dislocation, marked by early death and demoralization’ (2000a: 61), while women have proved better able to cope with the privations of the reform era. We would concur that this difference is rooted in the gender division of labour within the household. At the same time, we would not minimise men’s economic advantage. Burawoy et al. argue that ‘economic activity has been forced back into the household as the unit of production and reproduction’ (2000b: 237), so that men’s wages have become increasingly marginal to household budgets. By contrast, our research confirms the view of Simon Clarke (2002) that waged work is still the basis of survival for most people. Those who are really forced to centre their survival strategies on the household find themselves in extreme poverty, as the case of Maria (3–39, b. 1946), discussed in Chapter 6, illustrates. Maria, having exhausted her benefit entitlement and unable to find a job, retreated to the countryside where, ‘I lived on mushrooms, I caught fish myself, bought some smetana [sour cream]…and… ate it, that’s how I survived’ (3–39–3). Grubbing for subsistence in this way is the reality of survival focused solely on household resources. Cash income is necessary for survival and this can only be gained through paid work, benefits, loans or gifts. Thus, while we would argue that women’s householdbased activities play a vital role in maintaining their morale, they do not provide financial compensation for lower wages. Given their disadvantage in the labour market, women are undoubtedly poorer than men. At the same time, they are better protected from the psychological effects of poverty by the rich exchange networks in which they are embedded, and the satisfaction they derive from successful household management in the face of the pressing challenges thrown up by reform. For this reason, it is inaccurate to see women’s role in the household simply as a ‘burden’. The privations of the transition era have served to reveal its hidden benefits.

Notes 1 This illustrates the powerful tendency of patterns of relations to be reproduced, which the notion of ‘structure’ in social science serves to explain (Sewell, 1992:2). After external shocks (such as structural adjustment in the 1990s), norms and beliefs, or what Sewell would call ‘schemas’, play a crucial role in promoting the continuation of existing patterns of relations (such as the unequal distribution of power and resources between men and women). 2 For an account of Hakim’s ‘preference theory’ see Chapter 4.

Conclusion

199

References Ashwin, S. (2000) ‘Gender, state and society in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia’, in S. Ashwin (ed.) Gender, State and Society in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia, London: Routledge: 1–29. Ashwin, S. and Lytkina, T (2004) ‘Men in crisis in Russia: The role of domestic marginalization’, Gender & Society, 18, 2:189–206. Burawoy, M., Krotov, P. and Lytkina, T. (2000a) ‘Involution and destitution in capitalist Russia’, Ethnography, 1:43–65. Burawoy, M., Krotov, P. and Lytkina, T. (2000b) ‘Domestic involution: How Women Organise Survival in a North Russian City’, in V.Bonnell and G.Breslauer (eds.) Russia in the New Century: Stability or Disorder? Westview Press. Clarke, S. (2002) Making Ends Meet in Contemporary Russia: Secondary Employment, Subsidiary Agriculture and Social Networks, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. England, P., Farkas, G, Kilborne, B. and Dou, T. (1988) ‘Explaining Occupational Sex Segregation and Wages: Findings from a Model with Fixed Effects’, American Sociological Review, 53:544–558. Figart, D., Mutari, E. & Power, M. (2002) Living Wages, Equal Wages: Gender and Labour Market Policies in the United States, London & New York: Routledge. Goskomstat (2003) Rossiiskii statisticheskii ezhegodnik, Moscow: Goskomstat Rossii. Katz, K. (2001) Gender, Work and Wages in the Soviet Union: A Legacy of Discrimination, Basingstoke: Palgrave. Ridgeway, C. (1997) ‘Interaction and the Conservation of Gender Inequality: Considering Employment’, American Sociological Review, 62:218–235. Ridgeway, C.L. and Correll, S.J. (2004). ‘Unpacking the Gender System: A Theoretical Perspective on Gender Beliefs and Social Relations’, Gender & Society, 18, 4:510–531. Sewell, W.H. Jnr. (1992) ‘A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency, and Transformation’, American Journal of Sociology, 98, 1:1–29.

Index academic sample groups (Moscow) 6–7, 7–8, 15, 19; and networks 172–3; professional work orientation 93, 96–9, 102–3; secondary employment 150 age: discrimination 74; and gender ideology 48–50; minimal effect on income 22; and networks 188–9; of sample workers 7; and secondary employment 146; young people and pursuit of money 115–19, 129–30 Alasheev, Sergei 69 alcoholism/alcohol consumption: and divorce 208–9, 210; and downward trajectories 197–201, 210–11, 218–19; and failed male breadwinners 42–3, 52, 200; and gender 3, 195–6, 197, 200–1, 211, 218–19; and military service 207; and ‘missing cases’ 25, 26, 27; and professional work orientation 94; recipients of state benefits 159, 160; and sickness of a relative 203; and stress 198; and unemployment 3, 25, 42–3, 52 Alexandrova, A. 29n alimony payments 210 alternative lifestyle 120–22 altruism 184–5 ambition: additional qualifications 143–4; money as motivation 115–19, 129–30 Arabsheibani, R. 14 armed forces see military service Ashwin, Sarah 174–5, 179 aviation industry job losses 93–6, 99 Bannikov, K. 205 benefits see social protection biochemists sample group 7, 8, 97–9, 103–4, 153–4 biological sex differences see gender-appropriate work Bobak, M. 3

Index

201

Bolshevism: gender norms 32, 33–4 Botanical Gardens sample, Moscow 7–8, 102–3, 172 Bourdieu, Pierre 194 Braithwaite, J. 29n breadwinning: importance of women’s work 43–6, 127, 128; and instrumental orientation to work 109–15, 129, 130; Soviet gender order 33, 34, 35, 37–48, 50–3; see also female breadwinners; male breadwinners Bridger, S. 4 Burawoy, M. 4, 219 Burchardt, T. 19 bureaucratic insensitivity 11, 155 business ventures 151 caring: for older family members 107, 112–13, 182–3, 187; for sick relatives 201–4; see also child-rearing; childcare casual labour see informal labour activity changing jobs see mobility chemists see biochemists sample group child benefit 26 childcare: by family members 202; kindergartens 37, 47, 125, 203 child-centred family 177–8 child-rearing: Soviet gender order 33, 36–7 ‘churning’ 140–1 Clarke, Simon 28n, 219; ‘feudalization’ of employment relations 76, 165; mobility 135, 136, 137–8; networks 165–6, 167, 176; private sector and wages 22; secondary employment 18, 144–5 co-habitation 49–50 ‘comfortable’ outcome 17 communism see Soviet gender norms connections and employment see networks coping ability and gender 3, 48, 92, 211, 217–18, 219 ‘coping’ outcome 17 Correll, S.J. 215 Dale, Angela 33 death see mortality demoralisation of men 23–4, 53; and professional work orientation 92, 96, 218;

Index

202

recipients of state benefits 159, 160; vulnerability of male networks 188, 218 disability benefits 23–4, 157–9, 196, 204 discrimination see sex discrimination division of household labour see household management and gender divorce: and alcoholism 208–9, 210; and gender 208–10; and life events 207–10; and male breadwinner model 40, 42–3; and male downward trajectory 23, 24, 25, 27, 210; and unemployment 23, 24, 54n, 95, 210 domestic work see household management Doorewaard, H. 131n drinking see alcoholism/alcohol consumption dual incomes: importance 44, 45, 127, 128 early retirement as employment strategy 160 economic inactivity 17, 96, 109, 119–22, 129; after military service 205–7; see also unemployment ‘economic involution’ 4 economic reforms: radical effects 1–4 education: additional qualifications 143–4, 161, 214; costs of 114; effect of higher education on income 21, 143–4; and employment behaviour 142–4, 150, 214; and gender 216–17; inequalities after transition 8–9; and networks 170–1, 172; sample profiles 14–15, 21; see also graduate sample group; skills electrical factory sample, Moscow 6–7, 138 employers see hiring employment: definition for research 18; employment behaviour 134–62, 204, 213–14, 217; gender norms 32–54, 69–70, 147–8, 213, 214–16, 217; importance of work to women 34–5, 123–5, 127; instability of 111, 138–41; intolerance of drunkenness 198; lack of regulation 140–1; male advantage 2–3, 47–8, 57, 62–4, 68, 70–5, 173–6, 185, 213, 217; and male breadwinner norm 40, 47–8, 51–2, 147–8, 213, 215; and networks 140, 165–76, 182, 184–7, 188–9, 190; reliance on benefits 154–60, 204, 217; sex segregation and discrimination 57–84, 143;

Index

203

Soviet gender order 33–4, 34–5; see also breadwinning; hiring; labour market participation; private sector; secondary employment; state sector; unemployment; work orientations Employment Law (1991) 10 Employment Service 10–12 enforced leave 1 ethnicity: migrant workers 166, 168 exchange relations between women 176–83 ‘excluded’ outcome 17, 18–19, 20–1; alcohol problems 197, 200; benefits of networks for women 180–1; gender differences 23–7; and military service 207; and networks 168; and professional work orientation 93, 95–6 exclusion 17, 18–19; see also ‘excluded’ outcome; registered poor sample group ‘failing enterprises’: electrical factory 6–7 family: caring and support for older members 107, 112–13, 182–3, 187; material support from 24, 52, 121, 168, 169, 188–9; sickness of a relative and downward trajectory 201–4; support for grown-up children 177–8, 183; women and support networks 176–80, 182–3, 188, 218; young women reject Soviet model 118–19; see also divorce; fatherhood; marriage; motherhood; single parents fatherhood: avoidance of military service 49; caring for sick child and life trajectory 203; parental leave 155; single fathers and household management 112, 155–6; support for children 184 Federal Employment Service 10–12 female breadwinners: discrimination against working mothers 49, 60, 71–2, 215; and gender norms 50–3;

Index

204

and household burden 50–1; and instrumental orientation to work 112–15, 129, 130; male support 40–1, 51, 96; post-Soviet gender ideology 43–8; as ‘second-class’ employees 43, 47, 48, 216; social orientation to work 122–8, 129, 130, 141–2; tradition of working women 53n; see also low paid work for women; sex segregation and discrimination ‘female’ professions 62, 63, 64, 66, 67, 68, 154; male encroachment 73, 77, 83, 216 fertility: decline in 50 Figart, Deborah 38, 215 flexibility: convenient work for mothers 122–3, 124–6, 127–8, 129, 141–2, 161; and gender 143, 161, 214; and instrumental work orientation 109, 129; male advantage in labour market 72–3; and professional work orientation 92–101, 105, 128, 214; see also mobility Gallie, D. 131n, 191n gender ideology 32–3 gender norms 6, 32–54, 214–16, 217 gender order concept 33 gender status beliefs 48, 64, 65–6, 214–16 gender stereotypes: ‘male’ professions 62–4, 65, 66–7, 216 gender-appropriate work 57, 58–9, 61–9, 73, 76–84, 216 ‘gender-neutral’ work 68, 73 gendered networks 173–88, 190, 217 Goldthorpe, J. 89 Golod, S. 177–8 Goskomstat 174 graduate sample group (Ul’yanovsk) 8–9, 15, 19; female commitment to work 35, 49–50, 117–19; and military service 9, 205–7; ‘missing cases’ 26–7; and networks 188–9; working mothers 49 grandparents: caring role 202 Grogan, Louise 21, 135, 136, 138 habitus and lifestyle choice 194 Hakim, Catherine 87, 130n, 219n health: benefits of networks 180–1, 183; and downward trajectories 193–7, 210; effects of alcoholism 199;

Index

205

gender and health risks 195–7; and ‘missing cases’ 25; see also alcoholism; life expectancy; mortality heavy drinking see alcoholism ‘heavy’ work: sex segregation 59–60, 62, 72–3, 76–7, 78–80 higher education: effect on income 21, 143–4; and networks 170–1, 172; see also graduate sample group hiring: ‘feudalization’ of employment relations 76, 165; gender-appropriate work 67–8, 67–9, 216; and gendered networks 174–5; male dominance in preferred jobs 3; in post-transition society 189; see also sex segregation and discrimination Holdsworth, Clare 33 ‘household economic potential’ measure 13 household management and gender 4, 41–2, 147, 215, 217; hours spent on 46–7; male support for female breadwinner 40–1, 51–2, 96; marginalisation of men 4, 43, 218, 219; monetary value of male contributions 179–80; single fathers 112, 155–6; social orientation to work 122–8, 129, 130, 141; Soviet gender order 33–4, 35–6, 50–3; women’s role in household 4, 43, 46–8, 53, 113, 176–7, 217–18, 219; and women’s support networks 176–83, 218 housing and division of household labour 36 income: effect of higher education 21, 143–4; and gender 23; and mobility 136–7; and professional attachment 102–3; and research outcome categories 17–18, 20–1; young motivated by money 115–19, 129–30; see also wages industrial sample group (Moscow) 6–7, 19, 138 industry: low representation of women 16–17; production decline 6; sex segregation and ‘heavy’ work 59–60, 62, 72–3, 76–7 informal labour activity 17, 18, 121, 210; employment behaviour 140, 144–5, 158–9, 160; see also secondary employment Institute of Biochemistry see biochemists Institute of Comparative Labour Relations Research see ISITO

Index

206

institutional care: effects on young people 24 instrumental work orientation 88, 89, 90–1, 108–22, 129–30, 144 intelligence: assumed male advantage 62–3, 72 invalid benefits see disability benefits ISITO Household Survey 5, 14; breadwinner status 35; division of labour in household 46; mobility and income 137–8; networks 167, 176, 184; private sector employment 15–16, 22; secondary employment 145–6 job advertisements: sex discrimination 68–9, 82 Kabalina, Veronika 22 Karelina, Marina 11 Katz, Katarina 2–3, 14, 21 Kay, R. 4 Kharkhordin, Oleg 122 Kiblitskaya, Marina 7, 28n, 35 kindergartens 37, 47, 125, 203 Kletsin, A. 177–8 Kollantai, Aleksandra 34 Komi Republic 12–13, 155 Kozina, Irina 47, 165 Labour Code (2001) 59–60, 61, 71 labour collective 122, 123–4 Labour Force Survey 2 labour market participation: branch distribution and sex segregation 69, 77–9; categories of research groups 5–6; effects of alcoholism 198–9, 200; gender trends 2; and life events 193–211; see also breadwinning; employment; employment behaviour Lau, L. 14 layoffs see redundancy leave: enforced 1; see also maternity rights; sick leave life events and trajectories 14, 193–211; female downward trajectories 182–3, 194–5, 200–1; male downward trajectories 23, 24, 27, 197–201, 205–7, 210

Index

207

life expectancy 1–2, 3, 183, 195; see also health; mortality lifestyle choice 194 living standards: decline 1, 194 lone parents see single parents looked after children in labour market 24 low paid work for women: gendered networks and hiring 174; reasons for acceptance 80–1, 84, 105–7, 126–7, 127–8, 214; secondary employment 143, 152–4; sex discrimination 83 Lytkina, Tatyana 42 male breadwinners: ‘failed male breadwinners’ 40–3; and instrumental orientation to work 110–12, 129, 130; post-Soviet gender order 37–43, 45–6, 47–8, 51–2, 213; and secondary employment 40, 147–8, 213, 217; Soviet gender norms 33, 34, 35; and wage levels 38, 66, 215, 216 ‘male’ professions 62–4, 66–7, 68, 72–3; overlap with ‘female’ professions 73, 77–8, 83, 216; post-Soviet expulsion of women from 77–83 management jobs: male-domination 174 marginalisation of men 4, 43, 160, 218, 219 marriage: changing attitudes towards 49–50; onerous responsibility 120–1; and self-interest motivation 118–19 maternity rights: lack of 49; legislation 60; and sex discrimination 49, 71, 74–5; Soviet era generosity 155 Melikyan, Gennadi 53n men: alcoholism as male disease 3, 197, 200–1, 210–11, 218–19; downward trajectories 23, 24, 27, 197–201, 205–7, 210; labour market advantage 2–3, 47–8, 57, 62–4, 68, 70–5, 173–6, 185, 213, 217; lack of motivation to work 119–22, 205–6; life expectancy 1–2, 3; marginalisation in household 4, 43, 160, 218, 219; monetary value of household help 179–80; mothers and sons 183; motivated by money 115–19, 129–30; and networks 184–8; problems in adapting after transition 4, 23; professional attachment 92–101, 107–8, 128–9, 150, 213, 218;

Index

208

sex discrimination against 75–6; status and work 35, 64–6, 67, 110, 128, 129, 161, 185–6, 218; working women’s views on 44–5; see also demoralisation of men; fatherhood; male breadwinners; ‘male’ professions; military service mental health problems 25, 97–8 migrant workers 166, 168 military service 9; corrupting nature 205–6; and downward trajectory 204–7; and fatherhood 49 Milkman, Ruth 84 mobility 134–42; and gender 16, 126, 160–1, 213, 214; risks 111, 138–41, 143; and skills enhancement 142–3; and young motivated by money 116, 117; see also flexibility money as motivation 115–19, 129–30 monotonous work: gender stereotypes 65 Moore, Henrietta 33 mortality: from alcoholism 197, 200; and gender 3; increase after transition 194; in sample groups 24–5; and social capital 183; and social stress 2; see also health; life expectancy Moscow sample groups 6–8, 19, 172–3; educational profile 15; ‘missing cases’ 26; mobility 138; and networks 172–3; professional work orientation 93, 96–9, 102–3; secondary employment 150 motherhood: convenient work 122–3, 124–6, 127–8, 141–2, 161; delay in starting families 49, 50, 116, 118–19; discrimination against working mothers 49, 60, 71–2, 215; problems facing working mothers 49, 71–2, 74, 125; and secondary employment 147; Soviet gender norms 34, 118, 119; support for grown-up children 177–8, 183; women as second-class employees 47; see also maternity rights; pregnancy

Index

209

motivation see work orientations neo-liberalism 28n networks 164–90, 217; and alcoholism 198–9; family support 168, 169; female prerogative 47, 48, 164–5; female support networks 176–83, 188, 218; health benefits 180–1, 183; and labour market success 140, 165–73, 173–76, 184–7; and male advantage in labour market 164, 173–6, 185; and male downward trajectory 27, 198–9, 218; moral support for women 180–3, 188; social similarity drawback 169–71; and social stratification 166–8, 190; vulnerability of male networks 184–8, 190, 217–219; and younger generation 188–9 Newell, A. 14 night work and employment of women 60 nurseries see kindergartens Omel’chenko, Elena 189 Ovcharova, L. 72 ‘parasites’ 119–22, 129 parental leave: for fathers 155; see also maternity rights part-time work 128 patriarchy: Soviet distrust 34 patronage 17; and gendered networks 173–6, 184–5 pay see wages peasants: tradition of working women 53n pensions 160 personal relationships: and instrumental work orientation 118–19; and male breadwinner norm 38–9, 40–3, 52–3; working women’s views on men 44–5; see also divorce; marriage Pfau-Effinger, Birgit 33 philanthropy 184–5 Pirogov, G. 29n ‘poor’ outcome 17 poor, registered see registered poor sample group Popova, Irina 28n poverty: economically inactive 17;

Index

210

effect on men 4, 219; increase in 1; and networks 165–73, 190; overrepresentation of women 3, 155, 219; registration as poor 12–13, 154–5, 156–7; and sickness 196–7; and single parenthood 208; see also exclusion; poor/excluded sample group; subsistence ‘preference theory’ 87, 219n pregnancy: and dismissal 71, 75; employment constraints 60; see also maternity rights private houses: division of labour 36 private sector employment 15–16; lack of maternity rights 49, 71, 74–5; male flexibility advantage 73; sex discrimination 73, 74–5, 82–3, 216; wage levels 21–2 ‘professional’: Russian use of term 88–9 professional work orientation 88–9, 91–108, 128–9, 130; difficulties after transition 91–2; and male breadwinners 39–40; and male identity 101; male responses to transition 92–101, 107–8, 128–9, 150, 213, 218; women’s professional attachment 101–8, 128–9, 218; see also graduate sample group Prokof’eva, L.M. 72 Pronin, S. 29n public sector see state sector recession 1 recruitment see hiring redundancy: male professional responses 93–4; women at greater risk 77 regulation: and discrimination 59–61, 69; and state benefits 155 Reilly, B. 14 relationships see personal relationships registered poor sample group (Syktyvkar) 12–13, 19–20; and education 21; gender differences 20–1, 23, 24–7; ‘missing cases’ 23, 24–6; and networks 166–7, 168–9; and professional work orientation 93, 95–6;

Index

211

reliance on benefits 154–5 registered unemployed sample group (Samara) 9–12, 19; male demoralisation 23–4; migrant workers 168; ‘missing cases’ 23–4; reliance on benefits 154; views on sex segregation in work 70 research methodology 4–27; interviews and data sources 13–14; ‘missing cases’ 23–7; outcomes categorisation 17–19, 20–1; outcomes and gender 20–1, 22–7; sample groups 6–13 residency permits 24 Ridgeway, Cecilia 48, 66, 214–15 risk: changing jobs 111, 138–41, 143; health risks and gender 195–7; and instrumental orientation to work 111–12, 116–17 Rosefielde, S. 28n Rotkirch, Anna 177 routine work: gender stereotypes 65 rural life: division of household labour 36; tradition of working women 53n Russian Centre for Public Opinion Research (VTsIOM) 89–90, 145–6, 149, 183 Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) 5, 14, 135 Sabirianova, Klara 131n Salmi, Anna-Maria 167 Samara see unemployed sample group sample groups 6–13; educational profile 14–15; employment profile 15–16; gender wage gap 14; ‘missing cases’ 23–7; range of workers 7; see also graduate sample group; Moscow sample groups; registered poor sample group; registered unemployed sample group secondary employment 17–18; and employment behaviour 140, 144–54, 161; and gender 115, 143, 145–54, 161, 213, 214, 217; and instrumental work orientation 109, 110–12, 116, 129; lack of social protection 152; and male breadwinner norm 40, 147–8; and professional work orientation 92–3, 94–5, 96–9, 103, 104–5, 150, 153–4; and stress 97–8, 105, 150 self-employment 16, 22

Index

212

self-interest as motivation 115–19 service sector: gender stereotypes 66 sex segregation and discrimination 57–84, 143; and branch distribution 69, 77–9; discrimination against men 75–6; discrimination against working mothers 49, 60, 71–2, 215; employers’ preferences 3, 67–9, 216; gendered networks 173–6, 217; regulatory context 59–61, 69; shifting gender profiles 76–84; state proscription of employment of women 57, 58, 59–60; statistical discrimination during transition 70–5; work segregation 174 sexual harassment 74, 76 shadow economy see informal labour activity Shamanov, Vladimir 8 Shkolnikov, V. 2 sick leave 49; for mothers 71–2, 74, 125 sickness: of a relative and life trajectories 197–201; see also alcoholism; health single parents: increase in 208; single fathers 112, 155–6 skills: and employment 142–4, 214; and mobility 137; and secondary employment 150; see also education social capital: and health 183; see also networks Social Change and Economic Life Initiative (SCELI) 54n, 191n social exclusion see exclusion social isolation of men 27 social networks see networks social orientation to work 88, 89, 90, 122–8, 129, 130, 141–2 social protection 12–13; child benefit 26; and gender norms 154–7; of primary employment 152; reliance on benefits as employment behaviour 154–60, 204, 213–14, 217; stigmatisation 155–6, 159; unemployment benefits 10–11; see also disability benefits social services and gender norms 155–6 social stratification: and health 194; and networks 166–8, 190

Index

213

Soviet gender norms 33–7, 50–3, 217; combining family and work 118–19, 122–3, 124, 127–8, 215; regulation and sex discrimination 59–60, 61; sex segregation at work 58, 59–60; women expected to work 53n, 57–8; women in ‘male’ professions 79 Soviet Labour Code 59–60 sponsorship see patronage standard of living 1, 194 state see regulation; social protection; Soviet gender norms; state sector state sector 21, 22, 73 status and work: importance to men 35, 64–6, 67, 110, 128, 129, 161, 218; less important to women 113–14, 161, 218; male networks 185–6; see also demoralisation of men stress: and alcoholism 198; coping and gender 3, 48, 92, 211, 217–18, 219; and secondary employment 97–8, 105, 150; social stress 2 subsistence: on household resources 219; minimum income level 10–11, 18 suicide rate and gender 3 supplementary employment see secondary employment support networks and women 176–83, 188, 190, 218 Syktyvkar see registered poor sample group Taganrog surveys 3, 14, 21, 22, 127–8 training see education; skills trajectories see life events and trajectories transition: radical effects 1–4 Ul’yanovsk see graduate sample group unemployed, registered see registered unemployed sample group unemployment: and alcoholism 3, 25, 42–3, 52; benefits criteria 10–11; and divorce 23, 24, 54n, 95, 210; female layoff risk 77; and male networks 186–7; ‘parasites’ 119–22, 129; and professional work orientation 93–6; stable levels reflect economic decline 1; of women 2, 34, 214;

Index

214

see also demoralisation of men; economic inactivity; Federal Employment Service; registered unemployed sample group vocational education: and income 21, 142–3 VTsIOM 89–90, 145–6, 149, 183 wages: academic sample groups 7–8; decline in real level 1; delays in payment and wage debt 1, 7, 134, 140; differentials in and between sectors 21–2, 165–6; gender wage gap 2–3, 14, 23, 47, 53, 68, 149, 154, 216; and gender-appropriate work 68, 83, 216; hourly wage gap 14, 149; industrial sample groups 7; and male breadwinner norm 38, 66, 215, 216; and male status 110–11, 129; and mobility 136–7; and networks 176; part-time work 128; and research outcome categories 17–18; and skills enhancement 142; subsistence minimum 10; unemployment income 10; see also income; instrumental work orientation; low paid work for women women: alcoholism 200–1, 211, 218–19; assumed intellectually inferior 62–3, 72; coping ability 3, 48, 92, 211, 217–18, 219; downward trajectories 182–3, 194–5, 200–1; financial independence 117–19, 130; importance of work 34–5, 123–5, 127; life expectancy 2; and male advantage in labour market 47–8, 62–4; post-Soviet role 43–8; professional attachment 101–8, 128–9, 218; and reliance on benefits 213–14, 217; and secondary employment 146–7, 149–50, 152–4, 217; sexual harassment 74, 76; social orientation to work 89, 122–8, 129, 130, 141–2; support networks 176–83, 188, 190, 218; tradition of work 53n; understanding of sex discrimination 74–5; work preferences 87; see also female breadwinners; ‘female’ professions;

Index

215

household management; low paid work for women; motherhood; sex segregation and discrimination; Soviet gender norms women’s work see ‘female’ professions work see breadwinning; employment; labour market participation work orientations 6; categories 88; gender differences 16–17, 87–130; instrumental work orientation 88, 89, 90–1, 108–22, 129–30; and male breadwinner norm 39, 213; professional work orientation 88–9, 91–108, 128–9, 130, 150; sex segregation and gender norms 69–70, 214–16; social orientation 89, 122–8, 129, 130, 141–2 ‘worker-mothers’ 33, 58, 124 workers sample groups see Moscow sample groups working hours: and flexibility 143; hourly wage gap 14, 149; on housework 46–7; secondary employment and gender 149–50, 151–2; short time 1; and working mothers 49 working women see female breadwinners; low paid work for women Yakubovich, Valery 14, 57, 67–8, 70, 165, 174–5, 179 Yaroshenko, S.V. 182, 213, 214 Zhidkova, Elena 47

Adapting to Russia's New Labour Market Gender and Employment Strategy (Routledgecurzon History of Russia and Eastern Europe)

Civil-Military Relations in Russia and Eastern Europe (Routledgecurzon Contemporary Russia and Eastern Europe Series, 2)

Russian General Staff and Asia, 1860-1917 (Routledgecurzon History of Russia and Eastern Europe)

Adapting to Climate Change in Eastern Europe and Central Asia

Homeownership and the Labour Market in Europe

Real Wages and Employment: Keynes, Monetarism and the Labour Market

The new Eastern Europe

Health and Social Change in Russia and Eastern Europe

Reassessing Cold War Europe (Routledge Studies in the History of Russia and Eastern Europe)

Security and Strategy in the New Europe

The Japanese Employment System: Adapting to a New Economic Environment

The Extreme Nationalist Threat in Russia: The Growing influence of Western Rightist ideas (Routledgecurzon Contemporary Russia and Eastern Europe Series)

Growth and Employment in Europe

Europe Enlarged: A Handbook of Education, Labour and Welfare Regimes in Central and Eastern Europe

Education, Training and Labour Market Outcomes in Europe

The USA in the Making of the USSR: The Washington Conference 1921-22 and 'Uninvited Russia' (RoutledgeCurzon Studies on the History of Russia and Eastern Europe)

The New Entrepreneurs of Europe and Asia: Patterns of Business Development in Russia, Eastern Europe, and China

Gender and International Migration in Europe: Employment, Welfare and Politics (Gender, Racism, Ethnicity)

History of domestic mammals in central and eastern Europe

A History of Eastern Europe: Crisis and Change

Russia, Europe, and the Rule of Law (Law in Eastern Europe)

Work and Employment in Europe: A New Convergence?

Labour Market Planning Revisited

New Labour

Key Aspects of German Employment and Labour Law

NATO-Russia Relations in the Twenty-First Century (Routledge Contemporary Russia and Eastern Europe)

Women's Employment in Europe

The Cambridge Economic History of Europe: The Industrial Economies: Capital, Labour and Enterprise: The United States, Japan and Russia

New Labour, New Language?

Gender, Generation and Identity in Contemporary Russia

Adapting to Russia's New Labour Market Gender and Employment Strategy (Routledgecurzon History of Russia and Eastern Europe)

Civil-Military Relations in Russia and Eastern Europe (Routledgecurzon Contemporary Russia and Eastern Europe Series, 2)

Russian General Staff and Asia, 1860-1917 (Routledgecurzon History of Russia and Eastern Europe)

Adapting to Climate Change in Eastern Europe and Central Asia

Homeownership and the Labour Market in Europe

Real Wages and Employment: Keynes, Monetarism and the Labour Market

The new Eastern Europe

Health and Social Change in Russia and Eastern Europe

Reassessing Cold War Europe (Routledge Studies in the History of Russia and Eastern Europe)

Security and Strategy in the New Europe

The Japanese Employment System: Adapting to a New Economic Environment

The Extreme Nationalist Threat in Russia: The Growing influence of Western Rightist ideas (Routledgecurzon Contemporary Russia and Eastern Europe Series)

Growth and Employment in Europe

Europe Enlarged: A Handbook of Education, Labour and Welfare Regimes in Central and Eastern Europe

Education, Training and Labour Market Outcomes in Europe

The USA in the Making of the USSR: The Washington Conference 1921-22 and 'Uninvited Russia' (RoutledgeCurzon Studies on the History of Russia and Eastern Europe)

The New Entrepreneurs of Europe and Asia: Patterns of Business Development in Russia, Eastern Europe, and China

Gender and International Migration in Europe: Employment, Welfare and Politics (Gender, Racism, Ethnicity)

History of domestic mammals in central and eastern Europe

A History of Eastern Europe: Crisis and Change

Russia, Europe, and the Rule of Law (Law in Eastern Europe)

Work and Employment in Europe: A New Convergence?

Labour Market Planning Revisited

New Labour

Key Aspects of German Employment and Labour Law

NATO-Russia Relations in the Twenty-First Century (Routledge Contemporary Russia and Eastern Europe)

Women's Employment in Europe

The Cambridge Economic History of Europe: The Industrial Economies: Capital, Labour and Enterprise: The United States, Japan and Russia

New Labour, New Language?

Gender, Generation and Identity in Contemporary Russia

Recommend Documents