The study of gender is becoming increasingly important in the social sciences. Many Western scholars have stressed that it is now more and more accepted that gender divisions are a basic social relation and, for that reason, that gender inequality is as important as class or economic change for the understanding social advantage and disadvantage. This is extremely important as in this way gender studies have evolved away from and superseded an earlier focus on the position of women as one relatively disadvantaged group. Current research emphasises how gender relations between men and women structure society, including inequality between the sexes.
In the former Soviet Union, gender problems were not widely discussed because the official principle declared by authorities was equality of men and women. At the same time as statistical and empirical data show, this equality was quite artificial. The break up of the former USSR and the transition to a market based economy has not changed the situation. There are still a lot of problems concerning gender in the former Soviet Union. In addition to the central problems of citizenship and economic reforms,increasing gender inequality in post-Soviet societies draws more and more attention. At the same time, gender problems differ quite greatly from region to region. In Central Asia, for example, low wages in the state sector and a reassessment of cultural values has taken many women out of the workplace. Young women try to learn other skills that will bring them opportunities in the market economy. In Estonia, more highly educated women do not perceive increasing gender inequality as a social problem but prefer to return to an imagined past when men did the work and women had the right to stay at home. The following aspects of gender problems in Estonia will be analysed in this paper: the employment rate and the division of labor between men and women, the gender earning gap, and education as a key factor in the division of jobs. Unfortunately, it is often very difficult to make comparisons with Soviet times because statistics reflecting the real situation are not available. Only after the re-establishment of Estonian independence was specific attention given to gender differences, thanks to the reorganisation of government statistics according to international standards. And so, statistics will be used when possible, as well as empirical data from sociological surveys in Estonia.