Send message to Authors

Abstract

This paper develops the concept of the family cage as a central analytical framework for understanding how family-based norms structure employment decisions and organisational inequality in Kazakhstan. Labour markets are formally governed by meritocratic criteria such as skills and experience, but our study shows that professional evaluations are systematically mediated by workers’ family status, anticipated family trajectories, and conformity to gendered family roles.

The family cage refers to a socio-cultural mechanism through which family status is used as an institutionalised principle of workplace evaluation. Both women and men are assessed through marital status, parental responsibilities, and moral expectations attached to normative family roles. For men, marriage functions as a marker of stability and responsibility, unmarried men are viewed as unreliable. For women, even unmarried, employability is shaped by assumptions of inevitable motherhood and extensive caregiving obligations.

The paper asks how the family cage becomes embedded in organisational practices and how it produces gender-differentiated labour market outcomes. The analysis shifts attention from individual discrimination to organisational mechanisms through which family-based norms become legitimate criteria in hiring, promotion, and job allocation.

Theoretically, the study draws on feminist theories of gendered organisations and social reproduction, integrating insights from the literature on familialism, the ideal worker norm, the maternal wall, and flexibility stigma. A post-socialist feminist perspective situates the family cage within a context where neoliberal meritocratic discourse coexists with strong kin-based moral economies.

Empirically, the paper employs a mixed-methods design combining qualitative interviews with HR managers across multiple sectors and an original quantitative survey (N = 320). Interviews reveal that family status is routinely treated as a valid basis for employment decisions, with hiring processes involving questions about marital status, children, reproductive plans, and spousal approval. Survey data show that women—especially those with young children—face systematic exclusion, while men’s family status, particularly marriage, often enhances perceived reliability.

The paper argues that the family cage operates as a gendered sorting mechanism that naturalises inequality by framing discriminatory practices as culturally appropriate and morally justified.

Send message to Author

Abstract

Recently, young people have faced more socio-economic challenges than previous generations worldwide (Aassve et al., 2013; Scarpetta et al., 2010). Ambiguity in the labor market, skills mismatches, poor health conditions, and education-related barriers continue to push more young people into precarious situations (Eurofound, 2012). In this sense, the concept of 'NEET,' which first appeared on the agenda of British policymakers in the 1990s, has helped many countries identify individuals in vulnerable circumstances (Furlong, 2006; Social Exclusion Unit, 1999). While NEET stands for 'not in education, employment, and training' and is used to assess youth vulnerability (Furlong, 2006, p. 554), its markers remain higher, especially among women worldwide. Recent data show an increase in the global NEET rate (21.8% in 2019; 23.3% in 2020), with young women being twice as likely to fall into the at-risk category compared to men (ILO, 2022). This paper offers a quantitative analysis of the main factors that increase the likelihood of women becoming NEET in Kazakhstan, based on secondary data from the Labour Force Survey covering 2012 to 2022. In Kazakhstan, the NEET rate for women has been twice as high as that for men. One in ten young women aged 15–28 is neither employed nor engaged in educational activities. Key factors increasing the likelihood of a woman becoming a NEET include possessing vocational education, being a young mother, living with a larger family, and residing in a rural area. The paper also discusses how the Labour Force Survey can be used as a policy tool to address the NEET issue in Kazakhstan.

Send message to Authors

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.