# Introduction

A change in presidential leadership in 2016 brought significant social and economic reform to Uzbekistan. Making changes to national employment policies to better combat gender discrimination was a high priority of the new government – an ambitious goal for a society with deeply rooted gender stereotypes.

A series of legal reforms set off the new program. An article guaranteeing equal rights and opportunities for women and men was defined in the National Development Strategy (2017-2021). A subsequent presidential decree (published in 2019) committed the government to lifting restrictions to participation of women in all fields of economy, increasing women’s economic participation, and launching awareness-raising campaigns to develop a culture of women’s leadership and entrepreneurship. The country’s first gender equality law codifying these principles was enacted in 2019, and a national strategy for achieving gender equality from 2020-2030 was published in 2020. Also in 2019, the authorities lifted a law first instituted in 1999 that restricted women from working in over 450 professions<sup>1</sup> with unfavorable working conditions (but often higher pay).<sup>2</sup> Finally, a new labor law first proposed in 2019 and currently under parliamentary discussion as of this writing would prohibit employers from indicating preferences based on sex, age, appearance, residence permit, and other criteria during the recruitment process in Uzbekistan,<sup>3</sup> punishable by administrative liability.

The ground also shifted with respect to women’s participation and representation in political life. In 2017, women made up only 16 percent of the legislative chamber of parliament. But after elections in 2019 this rose to 48 percent in the lower chamber of parliament and 32 percent of deputies (IPACIS, 2020). This brought Uzbekistan to the 37<sup>th</sup> position among 190 parliaments in the world in terms of the number of women in the parliament (OSCE, 2020). But despite these remarkable improvements, women have remained underrepresented in leadership positions, especially in local government. For instance, in 2020 women still made up only 3 percent of the country’s 162 district governors (Petrov, 2020).

Broad indexes of gender equality suggest that Uzbekistan has achieved rather mixed overall performance. The 2019 Human Development Index value for women in Uzbekistan was 0.70 compared to 0.74 for men, resulting in a Gender Development Index (GDI) value of 0.94. This places Uzbekistan in the middle of neighboring countries’ performance, with GDI values for the Kyrgyz Republic somewhat higher 0.96, and somewhat lower in Tajikistan at 0.82. The 2019 round of the global Gender Inequality Index (GII) in 2019 ranked Uzbekistan in 62<sup>nd</sup> place out of 162 countries (UNDP, 2020). Benchmarking the index components reveals that women in Uzbekistan were not reaching their full human development potential mainly due to gender inequalities across three dimensions: i) reproductive health, ii) empowerment (measured by educational attainment and political participation), and iii) labor market participation. At 70.6, Uzbekistan scored modestly according to Women Business and the Law index for 2021, though its ranking has improved in recent years (World Bank, 2021).

> 1 The list of jobs prohibited to women from December 1999 to May 1, 2019 can be found here. This list was approved by the Ministry of Employment and Labor Relations (on December 24, 1999) and the Ministry of Health (on December 22, 1999) in consultation with the Council of the Federation of Trade Unions of Uzbekistan.

> 2 Available at https://lex.uz/ru/docs/4230938

> 3Available at https://regulation.gov.uz/ru/document/22152

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