t it started to increase after the crisis was Smith 2surmounted. According to data from R.F. Goskomstat, in 1992-1998 the number of employed dropped from 72 million to 63 million people, and the number of unemployed (according to the definition of the International Labor Organization) rose from 4 million to 9 million, but these values had been 65.1 million and 8.7 million people, respectively, as early as November of 1999. During a period of economic decline, the employment of women declined more quickly than the employment of men (19.3 and 17.9 percent over 1992-98), but the expansion that has begun has made it possible to increase the number of female employees to a greater extent, and the gain in employment among women has been twice that of men. Nevertheless, the number of unemployed women rose by a factor of 2.2, and men by 2.4, over this period. This is explained by the fact that when there is a decline in demand for labor power, some able-bodied citizens leave the economically active population. Many researchers regard this phenomenon as a latent form of unemployment (the "discouraged"), that it has specific gender features. Women's educational levels continue to exceed those of men. In 1995, 20.1 percent of employed women had higher education, compared to 17 percent of employed men. Approximately 69 percent of women, compared to 65.7 percent of men, had secondary education. In the 1980s and 1990s, although the number of men and women receiving education in universities and technical colleges declined sharply, women's proportion of the total receiving such training remained consistently above 50 percent. Despite women's high education levels, public sector employment figures from the fields of education and medicine indicate that women do not share equal opportunities in the workplace. Even in fields in which women predominate, men hold higher and more prestigious leadership positions. Smith 3Women ...
