Aigul Zabirova,
Doctor of Sociological Sciences, Professor,
Chief Research Fellow,KazISS under the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan
Gender inequality in career advancement is commonly examined within organizations. Public opinion survey data show that the rule determining whose work takes priority is established earlier, at home. And it does not sound like “the man is the head of the family,” but rather like the neutral phrase, “I have work.”
She was offered a promotion she had been waiting for several years, on the condition that she move to another city by the beginning of the year. That evening, she told her husband about it at home. He listened, said he was very happy for her, and then added, ‘I have work’. And that was essentially the end of the conversation. No one made any decisions. Whose work takes priority is almost never explicitly decided within a family. It is more of a rule than a decision, and as long as it works, it simply goes unnoticed. That is why it is so difficult to ask people about it: in their answers, they describe not what they chose, but simply the way things are in their family.
How do men and women perceive this rule? Where resources are limited, the majority of both men and women say that when work and family come into conflict, the man’s career usually takes priority. But something changes with higher education, good employment, and personal income. While men continue to express the priority of their careers, women become noticeably less likely to agree with this. In one survey[1], people living in marriage or in a partnership were asked: “If the interests of work and family come into conflict (for example, due to overtime, business trips, relocation, or a promotion), whose work or career usually takes priority in your family?”
Among respondents with limited resources, the responses of men and women were almost identical. The man’s career was identified as the priority by 60.5% of men and 58.7% of women, a difference of less than two percentage points.
The resource group consists of respondents who have a higher education, a monthly income of at least 201,000 tenge per household member, and employment as a manager, entrepreneur, or self-employed person. Those who meet at least two of these three criteria are classified as belonging to the resource group, which accounts for approximately one in four adults in the sample. Something changes with higher education, good employment, and personal income. The positions of men and women with greater resources begin to diverge noticeably. The man’s career was identified as the priority by 64.6% of men and 51.1% of women. The gap increased substantially, from two percentage points to thirteen and a half. Men with greater resources continue to identify their careers as the priority, while women have become noticeably less likely to agree. Women with higher education are less likely to identify the man’s career as the priority, whereas income level alone produces almost no such difference.
In sociology, it is a well-known fact that a person’s view and behaviour may be different. In the same questionnaire, we asked women whether, over the past five years, they had had to turn down a promotion, a new job, training, a business trip, or relocation for family or household reasons. Approximately one in five answered ‘yes’. At the same time, there were no differences between women with greater and fewer resources. In other words, although women with greater resources are less likely to identify the man’s career as the priority, they give up their own career opportunities for the sake of their families just as often as women with fewer resources.
This means that women with greater resources describe their families differently, but they give way just as often as everyone else. Why does disagreement in words not change the existing order? It seems to be because the argument is no longer with what people used to argue against. The hierarchy has changed its vocabulary. Previously, it said, ‘The man is the head of the family’, and it was possible to disagree with such a statement. Today, few people put it that way, and almost no one would say this about a wife’s career. Now the hierarchy speaks the language of professional obligations: ‘I have surgery’, ‘I have people counting on me’, ‘I should go, otherwise the deal will fall through’, ‘I have work’.
Each of these statements may well be true, and that is precisely where their strength lies. The language of professional obligations is neutral and convincing; it has no obvious addressee. It comes from the organization, while the organization needs an employee whom someone at home will make concessions for. The organization itself does not establish the rule about whose work takes priority. It receives that rule already in place from the family and calls it professionalism.
Let us return to that evening. Her husband did not object to the promotion or to her career; he simply had work. This is precisely what makes inequality today so distinctive. No one is openly opposing equality or demanding a return to the old order, so there is no one for the woman to argue with. Her disagreement runs not into someone else’s opinion, but into someone else’s schedule.
One might object that many women choose family themselves and do not consider this a concession at all. Besides, in many families, the person who earns less is the one who makes concessions, and this is not a matter of gender but simply a matter of family economics. Finally, one might question the data themselves. The survey interviewed individual men and women, rather than couples, and they may well be describing different families. In that case, there may be no disagreement within the household at all.
The last objection is the most serious, and it is justified. The survey did not include couples, and part of the gap may indeed be explained by differences between the families of resource-rich men and those of resource-rich women. It appears, then, that resources make the hierarchy a matter of dispute, even if so, far only at the level of words. And the number of such people is growing. Today, 53% of women and 44% of men in the country have higher education, which means that there are increasingly more households where this quiet disagreement can emerge.
There is much discussion today about women’s careers, and the obstacles are usually sought within organizations. But the rule that an organization takes for granted is established earlier, over dinner, when a possible relocation is being discussed. And this is not unique to our country. Everywhere women are attaining education at least as often as men, the vocabulary changes faster than the rule.
[1] The public opinion survey was commissioned by KazISS and conducted from April 10 to May 10, 2026. The sample size was 8,000 respondents. The survey included respondents aged 18 and over from 17 regions and 3 cities of republican significance — Astana, Almaty, and Shymkent.
