Gendered Drivers of Political and Administrative Career Behaviour in Post-Soviet Kazakhstan

What does the gendered nature of career progression tell us about differences in government institutions? While questions of recruitment and selection vary between elected representatives, professional civil servants, and appointed bureaucrats, gendered differences in their career progression may also reveal additional information about perceptions of the institutions that they staff. Using novel data on the careers of permanent, appointed, and elected officials in Kazakhstan’s legislature and public administration, we explore differences between women’s career progression across different government offices. Kazakhstan’s post-Soviet political system, with its longstanding and highly institutionalised public administration, alongside a more recently professionalised legislative branch, makes for a perfect backdrop to explore gendered differences in career progression across government institutions. These differences can also reveal divergent perceptions of prestige and access that reinforce uneven gender equality across each institution. As Kazakhstan looks to draw upon its traditional culture as part of its national building, findings also provide important evidence for how a legacy of official gender equality interacts with more informal forms of gender-based segregation.