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Gender Regime and Women’s Employment in Kazakhstan

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Abstract

Researchers have analyzed care policies in the wider Europe in order to understand how these may impact labor force decisions of women. We extend this analysis to Central Asia, focusing on the emerging gender regime in Kazakhstan, which has become a leader in announcing policies to facilitate combining family responsibilities with employment. While childcare services have expanded rapidly in Kazakhstan, female labor force participation has not increased as might have been expected based on the European cases. We draw on the data from the EBRD Life in Transition Survey from 2006, 2010 and 2016 to examine how motherhood and the availability of childcare are related to the employment choices of Kazakhstani women. We find that motherhood of very young children is strongly associated with a lower likelihood of employment and that the availability of childcare does not affect this relationship. Considering possible reasons for this and the typology European gender regimes, we suggest that greater availability of quality care for children under 2 and increased support for caring by fathers which would reduce opportunity costs of employment for women and could help Kazakhstan achieve its goal of increasing gender equity.

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Fig. 1

Source: World Bank Gender Statistics, www.worldbank.org; Time Use Statistics, UN, www.unstats.un.org

Fig. 2

Source: National Statistical Office (2020)

Fig. 3

Source: National Statistical Office (2020)

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Notes

  1. Male unemployment has also fallen, from 7% to 4.3%. The exception is the year 2012, which saw a slight and temporary rise in both male and female unemployment (World Bank 2020).

  2. This data was provided by the National Statistical Office to the Gender Economics Research Center at Narxoz University in the framework of a project on care in Kazakhstan funded by UN Women.

  3. Results available from the authors upon request.

  4. Given the extreme shortage of places reported for this age group (OECD, 2018), there is unlikely to be unused capacity.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful for the support of the UN Women Kazakhstan, the Soros Foundation Kazakhstan, the National Statistical Office, and the detailed feedback from two anonymous referees.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. American University, Washington, DC, USA

    Mieke Meurs & Stevie Marvin

  2. Gender Economics Research Center, Narxoz University, Almaty, Kazakhstan

    Maigul Nugmanova & Aizhan Salimzhanova

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  1. Mieke Meurs
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  2. Maigul Nugmanova
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Correspondence to Mieke Meurs.

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Meurs, M., Nugmanova, M., Salimzhanova, A. et al. Gender Regime and Women’s Employment in Kazakhstan. Comp Econ Stud 63, 603–622 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41294-021-00173-0

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