>
> Hi Mark,
> Question: Have you seen or heard of any stats that would give me the average
> number of working hours per gender anytime prior to 1990? Neither the ILO or
> GSS have these stats.
> Thanks,
> Nicole
>
According to the 1987 USSR Yearbook (Novosti Press Agency, Moscow, 1987)
Soviet women were conditioned by law to a 35-hour week. What that meant in
practice must be open to question. My impression when living there was that
people did not in general work hard and there was not much overtime. No doubt
there was much moonlighting. There was speed-up and overtime when people had
to reach plan targets.
Women received social benefits, but were and are members of a society with a
pathological degree of everyday male chauvinism. Women got partially-paid
maternity leave for 12 months. 85% of children attended pre-school nurseries
(this state system of provision has now collapsed). Women were relatively
over-represented in the health, welfare and education sectors and
under-represented in management and government. According to Novosti, 50% of
engineers and up to 40% of research workers were women. I can vouch for this
anecdotally. I was in the oil industry and at meetings would often meet
geological survery teams with many highly-qualified women field geologists.
They travelled widely, worked in diifcult an dangerous conditions, were used
to to that and were accepted by others as being normal professionals.
I think the great divide then and now was between town and country; people on
the kolkhoz or in the provinces fared less well. Often, much less well.
Sorry not to produce shovels of stats but they are probably spurious anyway.
Mark
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