Wages in a growing Russia - When is a 10 per cent rise in the gender wage gap good news?

The robust Russian economic recovery after the 1998 financial crisis raised the economic standing of the population, especially for lowly paid workers, most of whom are women. In this paper I use the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey from 1996 through 2002 to ask whether this helped to reduce the gender wage gap. I first focus on those whose wages are paid in full. Next, I ask about the gender composition of wage arrears as the overall extent of wage arrears dropped from 60 to 20 per cent after the 1998 crisis. I show that a temporary widening of the overall gender wage gap in 2000 is due to low-wage women becoming more likely to receive their wages in full than low-wage men. Except for this effect, the male-female pay difference in Russia exhibits a stable pattern.