HSE Researchers Uncover Causes of Gender Pay Gap among Recent University Graduates in Russia
A study conducted at HSE University shows that despite having the same education and similar starting conditions, the pay gap between male and female recent graduates can be as high as 22%. This is partly because female students often choose less lucrative fields and also because they tend to seek jobs in sectors that offer lower pay but are perceived to have more stable and safer working conditions.
The study included more than 400,000 early-career professionals and was based on data from the nationwide Monitoring Graduate Employment database, which contains details on graduates' education and subsequent employment. The study focuses on 2021 graduates and examines their career outcomes in 2022. The authors emphasise that this is not survey data, but an administrative dataset encompassing all graduates in the country.
The researchers found that women with the same educational characteristics earn 22% less than their male counterparts a year and a half after graduation. 'This disparity is not related to their abilities but rather to systemic factors,' according to Natalya Yemelina, co-author of the study and Senior Research Fellow at the Laboratory for Labour Market Studies of the HSE Faculty of Economic Sciences.
One of these systemic factors is that many young women still predominantly choose 'female' fields of study in the humanities and social sciences, as well as careers in education and medicine, where salaries are traditionally lower than those in engineering or IT, which are more commonly chosen by men.
Thus, over 50% of male graduates have studied engineering and technology, while nearly half of female graduates have chosen economics, law, and social sciences, where the starting salaries for graduates are, on average, 30% lower than in technology-related occupations.
'Although an increasing number of women have been choosing technology-related fields in recent years, a significant portion still prefers areas where salaries are lower. This affects their starting employment and earnings,' according to Ksenia Rozhkova, co-author of the article and Junior Research Fellow at the Laboratory for Labour Market Studies of the Faculty of Economic Sciences.
Such educational segregation accounts for one-third of the explained pay gap. Job characteristics such as industry, field of occupation, and company size appear to play a more significant role. Male graduates are more likely to secure jobs in high-paying industries such as mining and IT, where salaries in 2022 exceeded 80,000 roubles per month. In contrast, women tend to focus on sectors with lower earnings, such as education, healthcare, and administration, where salaries rarely exceed 50,000 roubles.
Another notable finding concerns the role of academic achievement. Women are more likely than men to graduate with honours, reflecting a high level of training attained. However, this does not necessarily result in tangible benefits. While graduating with honours increases employability, it does not guarantee women the same high salaries as their male counterparts.
The reasons for this gap may be linked to unobservable factors such as differences in working hours, career interruptions due to family obligations, and potential discrimination by employers.
In another article, the authors provide an even more detailed analysis, for the first time evaluating the dynamics of early-career gender inequality based on data from 2018 graduates. Despite the absence of family obligations or significant differences in work experience between men and women, a gender pay gap of 14% is observed in the first six months of their entry into the labour market. Within four years of graduation, the pay gap nearly doubles. While initially, right after graduation, 85% of the pay gap can be attributed to objective differences in education and work characteristics, a few years later, most of the gap remains unexplained. The largest gap is observed among the highest-paid professionals, indicating the presence of a glass ceiling effect from the very start of graduates' careers in the Russian labour market.
'The rapidly expanding early-career gender pay gap indicates that education policies may have limited ability to effectively address gender inequality in the labour market. The expectation that the pay gap can be minimised solely by reducing educational segregation is unfounded,' according to Sergey Roshchin, co-author of the study and Head of the Laboratory for Labour Market Studies at the HSE Faculty of Economic Sciences.
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