Gender wage gap dynamics in a changing Ukraine

The period 2003-2007 was a period of economic and political changes for Ukraine. In 2005, following the Orange Revolution, the new government engaged in a series of economic reforms, among which was strengthening the legislation aimed at encouraging gender equality in the labor market. Using data from the Ukrainian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (ULMS) I explore the impact of these economic and political changes on the gender wage gap. Policies for gender equality seem to be responsible for at least part of the reduction of the wage gap among the workers of the public sector, both through the reduction in the differences between the remuneration of observable characteristics for men and women and through the reduction in horizontal and vertical segregation. On the other hand, the impact of these policies among workers of the private sector (and especially among the informally employed) seems much smaller, especially as far as the impact on horizontal and vertical segregation is concerned. This study utilizes the ULMS data set, a project initiated within the IZA-program 'Labor Markets in Emerging and Transition Economies'. The project is financially supported by a consortium led by IZA, Bonn. The other permanent members of the consortium are CERT, Heriot-Watt University Edinburgh, EERC-Ukraine and RWI-Essen. Any opinions expressed here are those of the author and not those of ISET, University of Bologna or IZA institute.