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This paper examines the lived, everyday experiences of women fashion entrepreneurs in Uzbekistan, addressing the question of how they build and navigate their businesses in a context where there are gendered expectations for women. Drawing on ten in-depth qualitative interviews and digital ethnography of Instagram performances, the paper explores how entrepreneurial practices are embedded within social relations and culturally specific gender expectations.

The findings show that women entrepreneurs encounter different formal and informal constraints, including unpredictable taxes and regulations, as well as gendered expectations in family and institutional settings. Considering Deniz Kandiyoti’s concept of patriarchal bargaining, the paper argues that entrepreneurial agency is not expressed through resistance but through strategic negotiation within patriarchal structures. Furthermore, it shows that entrepreneurship in Uzbekistan is relationally embedded, with social ties simultaneously functioning as constraints and enabling resources.

This paper contributes to debates on gender and women entrepreneurship in three different ways. First, it extends the concept of patriarchal bargaining beyond the household, showing how it operates as an entrepreneurial strategy through which women navigate formal and informal constraints and opportunities. Second, it shows that an entrepreneurial agency in Uzbekistan is not always individualistic, but it is about social relations and embeddedness within them. Thirdly, it offers a contextualized understanding of entrepreneurship in Central Asia, where different institutional dynamics co-produce entrepreneurial practices.

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This paper addresses the following research question: why do structural barriers persist in limiting women's meaningful political participation in Uzbekistan despite formal legal reforms and increased numerical representation? Drawing on a mixed-methods design, the study combines qualitative and quantitative data collected from three sources: focus group discussions with 54 women deputies across five regional centers (Tashkent, Fergana, Samarkand, Karshi, and Nukus); semi-structured interviews with 32 participants of political leadership training programs; and an online survey of 29 female parliamentarians at national and local levels. These primary data are triangulated against international legal frameworks and secondary literature to situate Uzbekistan within broader comparative trends.

The paper finds that barriers operate across three interconnected domains. Socio-culturally, entrenched gender stereotypes and family resistance delay women's entry into politics, with many entering only after the age of 40–45, once domestic obligations ease. Socio-economically, the unpaid nature of local deputy work, combined with transportation costs and exclusion from high-paying professional networks, disproportionately burdens women. On security, focus group and interview data document harassment, workplace retaliation, and online abuse targeting women who challenge political authority. Together, these findings demonstrate that formal legal equality alone cannot dismantle structural inequalities - an argument tested through firsthand accounts that reveal persistent gaps between policy commitments and lived political realities.

The paper contributes to comparative gender studies by challenging approaches that equate numerical representation with substantive inclusion, and by offering empirically grounded analysis of how gendered power structures function in a transitional, post-Soviet context.

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This paper will present an ongoing interdisciplinary research studying patriarchal social institutions and gender asymmetry in Central Asia primarily through feminist approach to social sciences. Based on social media analysis, political ethnography and semi-structured interviews with local and international experts, the paper answers the question why Central Asian region is experiencing increasing re-traditionalization of societies and revival of patriarchy manifest in the form of increased number of cases of domestic violence and violence against women. The research is built on and continues the previous project on multiple crises in the region, the author aims to place the “crisis of patriarchy” into the “vicious cycle” of “traditional and non-traditional” security threats that, according to Niklas Swanström (2010), the weakening states of Central Asia are facing. Gender roles and gender asymmetry play important roles not only in discussion of their relation to sustainable economic development and women empowerment in political representation but also in nation-building processes and nationalistic rhetoric in the region.

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Femicide, the gender-based killing of women, remains largely invisible in Kazakhstan, where legislation does not recognize it as a distinct crime. Despite high rates of domestic violence and gender-based killings—estimated at 400 female victims annually—media coverage frequently fails to frame these murders as a social issue rooted in gender inequality, cultural norms, and systemic injustice. This study examines how femicide is represented in Kazakhstani news media. Funded by UN Women ECA as part of the “Women Count” project, the research combines quantitative web scraping method and qualitative discourse analysis to address the absence of official data and proper media representation.

The study builds a database of 106 femicide cases from 4,000 articles published on the leading online news portal Tengrinews.kz between 2018 and 2023. Descriptive statistics reveal that most femicides occur in enclosed urban spaces, predominantly in victims’ homes, and involve male perpetrators aged 21–40. Intimate partners account for the largest proportion of perpetrators, followed by acquaintances and family members, highlighting the relevance of domestic and familial contexts. Common methods of killing include stabbing, beating, and strangling. More than half of the female victims had children, yet protective measures were rarely documented.

Critical discourse analysis of 48 cases demonstrates consistent patterns in news coverage. Femicide is often unnamed, with reports foregrounding perpetrators while minimizing victims’ lives and agency. News articles frequently justify the murderer, dramatize the crime, and prioritize third-party perspectives, reflecting implicit biases and reinforcing cultural norms that normalize gendered violence. Victim-centered reporting, while present, remains rare.

The findings underscore the urgent need for legal recognition of femicide in Kazakhstan, systematic data collection, and responsible media practices that foreground victims and contextualize murders within broader gender inequality. The study contributes to the limited literature on Central Asian femicide, revealing regional patterns, such as multigenerational family dynamics, that shape perpetrator-victim relationships. By highlighting both quantitative trends and qualitative framing, this research informs policy interventions, media guidelines, and public awareness efforts aimed at preventing femicide and addressing systemic gender-based violence in Kazakhstan.