Although equal rights and opportunities for men and women are now guaranteed by the national constitution and laws, women are underrepresented or have secondary roles in many fields including science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The female labor force participation rate in Uzbekistan has remained consistently much lower than the rate among men, by as much as 28 percentage points according to the Listening to Citizens of Uzbekistan survey in 2018. These trends are partly the result of gender related stereotypes, social norms, and tradition-bound notions of family and motherhood that are widespread in Uzbekistan. If deciding to have a career, women are commonly expected to balance family life and work in ways that are not expected of men. The 2016 round of the Life in Transition survey found that 80 percent of the population supports a traditional family model of marriage in which “the man works outside the home and earns money while the woman takes care of children and the house” (EBRD, 2016; FAO, 2019). According to the 2018 Asian Development Bank Country Gender assessment (ADB, 2018), traditional gender norms, though usually not expressed in formal laws or policies, constrain the roles of women and men in the family and society, define implicit and explicit rules, and assign different jobs, values, responsibilities, and obligations to men and women (ADB, 2018). These largely qualitative assessments suggest that professional choices for women and men are significantly affected by gender stereotypes related to these social roles and expected feminine or masculine behavior, which in turn influence young people’s opportunities in education and in the selection of fields for future career development.

Providing equal opportunities for both men and women to be employed in nontraditional male or female occupations can lead to better job matching, a more productive labor force, and higher incomes. A growing literature attests to occupational integration on average helping both sexes contribute their human capital to enhancing the productivity of firms. Since 1960, occupational integration in the United States was responsible for driving 15 percent to 20 percent of the increase in aggregate output per worker (Hsieh Chang-Thai et al, 2019). Establishing a “critical mass” of at least 30-percent women in corporate leadership improves company innovation and general performance (Joecks et al, 2013). These firm- and individual-level rewards can have a large impact on growth and overall productivity. In these studies, norms about a gender’s suitability for a particular profession are commonly found to be the drivers of differences. For example, in many studies, secretarial or office managers are found to be coded as female, with expectations that a candidate should possess gender characteristics typically attributed to women, such as of softness, flexibility, carefulness, and persistence. This results in women being tracked into positions with inferior pay and responsibilities (Booth and Leigh, 2010).

Women’s underrepresentation in formal employment in Uzbekistan has translated to large economic losses. According to L2CU respondents, concern is equally high about the lack of jobs among both women and men, and overall, the issue is among the most pressing policy priorities facing Uzbekistan. Around 1.03 million more women would be active if the female employment rate in Uzbekistan equaled that of the states in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (FAO, 2019). Unemployment has also been much more prevalent among women than men in Uzbekistan, suggesting that when looking for work, women have more difficulty finding a job than men do. According to State Statistics Committee of Uzbekistan (2019), the official unemployment rate stood at 9 percent in 2019: 12.8 percent for women and 6 percent for men. A comparison of job seekers in the Ministry of Employment and Labor Relations’ largest job board showed that in 2019 about 54 percent of job seekers were women and 46 percent were men, with consistent trends in the first four months of 2020 (MELR, 2020).

3