Labour-force gender inequality existed in both the former Federal Republic of Germany and the former German Democratic Republic. It differed across the two countries, however, in its form and extent. We use life-history data through 1989 for people born in the 1950s and early 1960s to study how women's disadvantages evolved over the early adult work life. In both the East and the West, women earned less than men. In the East, the gap was smaller and constant, while in the West it widened over early careers. In the East, though, young women, as compared with young men, were increasingly likely to have vocational credentials higher than those required by their jobs. We examine job shifts to higher and lower earnings and to over-qualification to see how the countries' differences in political, economic, educational, and family institutions might have influenced job changing and outcomes. In the FRG, family configuration had a direct part in gender differences in earnings mobility, with effects in opposite directions for women and men. In the GDR, family status contributed to understanding the earnings and over-qualification gender gaps only indirectly, through gender differences in work histories. In the GDR, however, original job earnings had greater impact on men's advantage in earnings increases because of the more compressed wage structure there. Furthermore, East German women's greater propensity to be over-qualified relative to men explained almost all of the gender difference in moves to over-qualification, while explaining almost none of any net difference in the West.
