Abstract

This paper examines how gendered constructions of work–life balance function as structural and symbolic mechanisms of power limiting women’s advancement to executive leadership in Kazakhstan’s rapidly digitalizing IT sector. While global debates on women in STEM frequently emphasize individual ambition or skills deficits, this study situates leadership attrition within post-Soviet institutional legacies, organizational cultures, and enduring cultural norms surrounding motherhood and caregiving. Drawing on Hochschild and Machung’s (1989) concept of the “second shift,” Acker’s (1990) theory of gendered organizations and the “ideal worker,” Williams’s (2001) maternal wall framework, and Hays’s (1998) notion of intensive motherhood, the paper analyzes how gendered expectations are reproduced within contemporary digital workplaces.

The research employs a sequential mixed-methods design. Quantitative workforce data were collected from 32 IT companies in Kazakhstan to assess gender distribution across entry, mid-level, and executive positions. These data are complemented by 13 in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with mid- and senior-level women managers. Descriptive statistical analysis and thematic coding were used to identify structural patterns and lived experiences of career progression.

Findings reveal a pronounced leadership drop-off: although women constitute approximately 43% of the workforce and reach mid-level management at near parity with men, their representation at C-level declines sharply, with only 1.4% advancing from entry-level to executive roles. Promotion probabilities decrease in larger firms. Qualitative evidence shows that caregiving responsibilities operate as a central career filter. The “ideal worker” norm (Acker, 1990), characterized by constant availability and temporal flexibility, conflicts with culturally embedded expectations of intensive motherhood (Hays, 1998), generating moral dilemmas between family and career. Formal flexibility policies often carry stigma, reinforcing maternal wall dynamics (Williams, 2001).

By integrating feminist organizational theory with post-Soviet institutional analysis, the paper argues that leadership exclusion reflects not individual choice but the interaction of gendered cultural norms, care infrastructures, and organizational power structures. In doing so, it rethinks Central Eurasian digital transformation as a site where economic modernization coexists with deeply embedded gendered inequalities.