CAP Uzbekistan POLICY BRIEF No 6 by Dr Shoirakhon Nurdinova
The central finding of this analysis is that Uzbekistan faces two challenges. The first is institutional: closing the gaps between formal reform commitments and the administrative practices, enforcement mechanisms, and accountability structures required to give them real effect. The second is cultural: narrowing the distance between formal policy and the norms, attitudes, and household dynamics that determine how women experience the labor market in practice. Neither challenge can be resolved without progress on the other.
Shoirakhon Nurdinova PhD, is an Associate Professor at Kimyo International University in Tashkent. She holds a PhD in Economics from Anadolu University (turkey). Her research focuses on behavioral economics, migration, and gender studies in Central Asia. She is recognized as a pioneer of happiness economics research in Uzbekistan and is the author of the first Uzbek-language textbook on behavioral economics.
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Key Messages:
- Women in Uzbekistan earn only 64–68% of men’s wages, with pay gaps reaching 40% among prime-age workers — yet attitudes toward women’s economic equality remain deeply ambivalent.
- World Values Survey data (2011, 2022) reveal persistent gender bias: 64% of Uzbek respondents in 2022 still believe men make better business executives than women — a decline from 68.1% in 2011, but a large residual.
- Contradicting trends: while leadership bias has softened, belief that men should have employment priority when jobs are scarce rose from 60.2% (2011) to 73.1% (2022), with women’s agreement increasing sharply from 56.1% to 73.4%.
- Women themselves show stronger belief that employment is the key to their own independence (57.8% in 2011; rising further by 2022) — a strong normative foundation for pro-employment policy.Education access, workplace harassment, institutional failures, and victim-blaming in domestic violence cases compound attitudinal barriers into structural inequality.
1. Introduction
Uzbekistan has undergone a significant transformation since 2017, with the government committing to gender equality as a pillar of its modernization agenda. Yet beneath the headline indicators of reform, structural barriers continue to limit women’s full and equal participation in the labor market. This policy brief synthesizes available evidence on the key drivers of women’s economic empowerment in Uzbekistan. It examines four interconnected domains: access to higher education; the gender wage gap and care penalty; workplace sexual harassment; and social norms, domestic violence, and institutional response. Across these areas, the brief distinguishes between institutional barriers – those found in laws, administrative practices, and organizational culture, and cultural barriers – those based on attitudes, social norms, and gender expectations, because effective policy needs to address both together and step by step.
A central argument running through this analysis is that Uzbekistan’s formal reform trajectory has, in several respects, outpaced the normative and behavioral changes required to make those reforms effective. Legal changes create enabling conditions; they do not by themselves alter the daily realities of women in workplaces, households, and courts. Sustained progress requires complementary investment in enforcement, accountability, cultural norm change, and the empowerment of civil society organizations with the trust and proximity to reach women in rural and peri-urban settings.
The brief draws on World Values Survey (WVS) waves from 2011 to 2022, International Labour Organization (ILO) wage data from 2018 to 2025, UNDP care economy research, and administrative data from Uzbekistan’s Statistics Agency and judicial system. It is intended for policymakers, civil society organizations, and international development partners working on gender equality and inclusive economic growth in Uzbekistan and the wider Central Asian region. Administrative case data on domestic violence are subject to selection effects: they reflect reported and adjudicated cases, which represent a fraction of total incidents given high non-reporting rates. Where data limitations are material to the interpretation of findings, they are noted in the text.
| 64–68% Women’s wage relative to men ILO, 2018–2022 | 40% Pay gap, prime-age workers Motherhood penalty | 29% Overall wage gap (current) Structural | 64% Believe men are better executives WVS, 2022 |
2. The higher education: military bonus points and inequality
Education is the primary pathway through which women access formal, higher-productivity employment. The decision in 2006 to award extra university admission points to male applicants who had completed military service and received armed forces recommendations constituted an indirect but powerful mechanism of gender discrimination in higher education. Because women are not eligible for military service, this policy systematically disadvantaged female applicants in a competitive admissions environment, particularly in technical and professional fields where advanced qualifications are prerequisites for career entry.
The consequences were empirically visible: women’s share of university graduates declined significantly in the years following implementation, falling from 44.4% to 33.4% by 2013. This contraction was not evenly distributed across disciplines; women were disproportionately excluded from technical faculties in engineering, information technology, and applied sciences —the sectors driving economic modernization and offering higher wages and career progression.
The government has introduced new legislation, strategies, and institutions to expand women’s participation in politics, the economy, and social life.[1] The institutional reforms after 2017 have introduced separate quotas for applicants with military service, thereby creating more equitable opportunities for both male and female students. [2] Positive discrimination policies for female graduate students and government-sponsored tuition-free quotas have encouraged more women to pursue graduate education. [3] Data from the Statistics Agency of Uzbekistan show that women’s share of graduates reached 48% by 2024, suggesting that subsequent reforms and changing enrollment patterns have substantially corrected the admissions imbalance. However, the cohort of women who experienced reduced educational access between 2006 and the mid-2010s now constitutes a significant share of the prime-age labor force. Their underrepresentation in technical and managerial roles — reflected in persistent wage gaps and low promotion rates — is a direct, traceable consequence of that policy window. The 40% pay gap recorded among prime-age workers by the ILO are not merely a product of current discrimination; it is, in part, a delayed effect of earlier educational exclusion.[4]
Reversing the educational bottleneck requires not only maintaining gender-equitable admissions processes going forward, but actively addressing the mid-career disadvantages experienced by women whose qualifications were constrained by the policy era. Targeted reskilling, mentorship programs, and promotion pathway interventions for women aged 30–45 are warranted.
3. The gender wage gap
ILO data from 2018 to 2022 consistently shows women earning between 64% and 68% of men’s wages in Uzbekistan, placing the country among the more unequal labor markets in the region. The gap is not uniform: it widens substantially among prime-age workers (30–44 years), where it reaches approximately 40%. The belief that women’s higher earnings constitute a ‘problem’ — endorsed by 58.0% of respondents in 2022, including 53.1% of women themselves — has direct implications for wage negotiation, promotion-seeking, and women’s willingness to enter higher-paid fields. If women anticipate domestic friction from out-earning their partners, they may self-select into lower-paying roles as a rational household management strategy. This self-selection, while individually rational, aggregates into systemic underinvestment in women’s human capital and career development.
The age-specific concentration is a well-documented signature of the motherhood penalty — the wage and career cost women incur during childbearing years, care-related career interruptions, part-time or informal work transitions, and employer discrimination against women perceived as likely to exit or reduce their labor market engagement.
Demographic factors amplify this dynamic in the Uzbek context. Uzbekistan has one of the higher fertility rates in the post-Soviet space, and large average family sizes translate into extended periods of intensive childcare. Most women (79.67%) prefer to care for children under one-year-old themselves. As a result, women spend far more time on unpaid care work—about 46.92 hours per week compared to 16.48 hours for men, with an even wider gap among those aged 18–29.
A rising dependency ratio — the ratio of dependents to working-age adults — increases aggregate care demand. Because the gender division of unpaid labor remains highly asymmetric, with women bearing the preponderance of household and caregiving responsibilities, women are systematically more likely than men to exit formal employment, accept informal or reduced-hours arrangements, or forgo advancement opportunities. This burden also affects income: 40.4% of those caring for a child under three have no income, versus 13.77% among those not engaged in unpaid childcare.[5]
The institutional response to domestic violence in Uzbekistan compounds rather than mitigates this vulnerability. Analysis of a random sample of administrative cases found that in 6 of 10 cases, judges blamed female victims for the violence they experienced.[6]Victim-blaming at the institutional level signals to survivors that the justice system will not protect them and deters both reporting and the pursuit of economic independence.
4. Workplace Sexual Harassment
Workplace sexual harassment constitutes both a violation of women’s rights and a direct constraint on their labor market participation and career advancement. A documented incident illustrating the broader pattern involved a senior official in a professional setting publicly engaging in unwanted physical contact with a female colleague during a zoom meeting.[7]Incidents of this nature, particularly when they involve actors in positions of authority, signal a workplace culture in which women’s physical boundaries and professional dignity are insufficiently protected. The power asymmetry inherent in hierarchical workplace relationships means that women in vulnerable positions frequently calculate that reporting such behavior carries greater personal cost than absorbing it silently — risks of retaliation, damage to professional reputation, social stigma, and the well-founded expectation that complaints will not be acted upon.
When complaints are made, existing procedural frameworks in Uzbekistan frequently fail to deliver effective resolution. Investigations may be perfunctory, outcomes opaque, and sanctions absent or disproportionately light relative to the gravity of the conduct. This institutional failure perpetuates a cycle in which women manage harassment individually and informally rather than through legitimate channels, limiting their ability to remain in or advance within formal employment.
The structural wage gap of approximately 29% that persists even in the current data reflects not only care penalties but also occupational segregation, differential promotion rates, and direct pay discrimination. Highly qualified women — those with advanced degrees and professional experience — report lower promotion rates than comparably qualified men, indicating that educational credentials alone are insufficient to overcome workplace gender bias.
| Evidence Gap: There is a critical absence of systematic, disaggregated data on workplace sexual harassment incidence, reporting rates, and institutional response outcomes in Uzbekistan. Building this evidence base is a prerequisite for accountability and effective intervention. |
5. Social Norms, Domestic Violence, and Structural Vulnerability
Social norms governing gender roles in Uzbekistan create material constraints on women’s labor market autonomy. Survey evidence and qualitative research consistently document expectations that women seek spousal or family approval before taking up employment or enrolling in education. These attitudinal norms operate as barriers when families withdraw permission or withhold logistical support childcare, transport, household cooperation that women require to sustain employment.
The WVS also tracks respondents’ subjective sense of freedom of choice and control over their lives. In 2011, men reported a slightly higher mean score (8.10) than women (7.60) on a 1–10 scale. Both declined by 2022 men to 7.38, women to 7.28 suggesting a generalized reduction in perceived autonomy across the population. The gender gap in felt autonomy narrowed substantially, but primarily because men’s sense of control fell more sharply, not because women’s autonomy increased.
World Values Survey data illustrate the persistence of these attitudes at the population level. In 2011, 68.1% of respondents agreed that men make better business leaders than women; by 2022, this figure had declined modestly to 64%.
In 2011, 77.3% of Uzbek respondents agreed that men make better political leaders than women — a figure that declined to 63.4% by 2022. Similarly, agreement that men make better business executives fell from 68.1% to 64.0% over the same period. These downward trends are directionally encouraging. However, the residual level of bias remains high: nearly two-thirds of respondents still associate executive and political leadership with men rather than women.
Notably, the gender gap in these attitudes has narrowed: in 2022, men and women expressed nearly equal agreement on the business executive question (65.1% vs. 62.9%), compared to a 13-point gap in 2011 (76.1% vs. 63.0%). While gender convergence in attitudes is generally positive, convergence driven by women adopting male-typical views rather than by men moving toward equality is ambiguous in its implications for behavioral change.
| Indicator | 2011 | 2022 |
| Men make better political leaders — overall % agree | 77.3% | 63.4% |
| — Men agree | 83.0% | 65.0% |
| — Women agree | 73.5% | 61.9% |
| — Women disagree | 26.5% | 38.1% |
| Men make better business executives — overall % agree | 68.1% | 64.0% |
| — Men agree | 76.1% | 65.1% |
| — Women agree | 63.0% | 62.9% |
| — Women disagree | 37.0% | 37.2% |
6. Institutional failures: the state committee on family and women’s affairs
The State Committee on Family and Women’s Affairs is the principal state body with a mandate to advance women’s rights and welfare. Its effectiveness in fulfilling this mandate has been undermined by an organizational culture oriented toward public messaging and ideological promotion rather than rigorous evidence-based programming addressing women’s substantive needs, particularly in rural areas where both need and institutional capacity gaps are greatest.
A specific example of institutional misordering is the 2019 classification of women into 23 categories, including ‘migrants’ and ‘possible offenders.’ [8]The inclusion of predictive, risk-based categories that designate women as potential wrongdoers rather than rights-holders reverses the relationship between the state and the citizen: it positions the institution as a mechanism of surveillance and control rather than support and protection. Such categorizations risk stigmatizing women in already vulnerable situations, deterring engagement with the very services nominally designed to assist them, and entrenching a deficit-based rather than rights-based approach to women’s policy.
Civil society organizations, including women-led NGOs working at the community level, often possess the contextual knowledge, trust, and operational flexibility to deliver meaningful support to women that state structures do not. Their capacity remains systematically constrained by limited and precarious funding, restrictive registration requirements, and an institutional environment that has not consistently treated them as strategic partners in gender equality delivery.
7. Policy Recommendations
The following recommendations are based on the evidence discussed above and are organized by the main institutions responsible for carrying them out. They are designed to support each other and to address both current problems and long-term structural change.
| 7.1 Reform Higher Education and Workplace Promotion Pathways |
| Eliminate any remaining admission preferences that are unavailable to women on grounds other than merit, and strengthen gender monitoring of enrollment by discipline. |
| Introduce mandatory gender equality training for senior managers and HR personnel in public institutions and large private employers, covering unconscious bias, promotion criteria transparency, and legal obligations. |
| 7.2 Establish Independent Workplace Gender Discrimination Monitoring |
| Create an independent monitoring body — housed outside the SCFWA and reporting to the parliament — with a mandate to track gender discrimination in hiring, promotion, pay, and workplace conduct across public and private sector employers. |
| Mandate that all employers above a defined threshold (e.g., 50 employees) conduct and publicly disclose annual gender pay audits, with corrective action plans required where unexplained gaps exceed 10%. |
| Establish clear, enforceable penalties for workplace sexual harassment and gender discrimination, applicable regardless of the seniority or institutional affiliation of the perpetrator — with penalties scaled to organizational position where the conduct involves an abuse of authority. |
| 7.3 Strengthen Legal Frameworks on Domestic Violence and Victim Protection |
| Establish clear accountability standards for case officers who attribute blame to victims in the absence of supporting evidence, with disciplinary consequences for procedural violations. |
| Expand the network of women’s shelters and legal aid services, ensuring geographic reach to rural areas, and fund these services through predictable public budget lines rather than donor-dependent project cycles. |
| 7.4 Restructure the State Committee on Family and Women’s Affairs |
| Reorient the State Committee on Family and Women’s Affairs from a propaganda and messaging function to a rights-based, evidence-driven institution with a clear mandate to address women’s employment, safety, and economic independence. |
| Establish dedicated, multi-year budgetary allocations to registered local NGOs working on women’s employment, anti-violence services, and rural women’s economic empowerment — with transparent grant mechanisms, monitoring requirements, and independent evaluation. |
8. Conclusion
Uzbekistan’s reform decade has produced real institutional change. New legislation, reformed admissions processes, government-sponsored education quotas, and formal commitments to gender equality represent meaningful progress from the baseline of 2017. Women’s graduate enrollment has approached parity; the most egregious admissions discrimination has been corrected; and the policy framework for gender equality has expanded substantially.
Yet the evidence assembled in this brief tells a more complex story. The wage gap among prime-age women is not merely a residual of current discrimination; it is, in part, the traceable consequence of institutional decisions made a decade and a half ago, and it will not self-correct without active intervention targeted at the cohort of women whose qualifications and career trajectories were constrained during the 2006–2015 policy window. Social attitudes toward women’s leadership have shifted modestly but remain anchored to deeply gendered expectations, and the most recent data suggest that economic anxiety is pushing employment priority attitudes in the wrong direction. Institutional mechanisms — for workplace harassment, domestic violence adjudication, and the state’s primary gender body — remain inadequate to the challenge.
The central finding of this analysis is that Uzbekistan faces two partially distinct challenges that must be addressed simultaneously. The first is institutional: closing the gaps between formal reform commitments and the administrative practices, enforcement mechanisms, and accountability structures required to give them real effect. The second is cultural: narrowing the distance between formal policy and the norms, attitudes, and household dynamics that determine how women experience the labor market in practice. Neither challenge can be resolved without progress on the other.
Progress on both fronts will require political will sustained beyond the reform momentum of 2017–2022, investment in evidence and accountability systems that can track progress at a granular level, and a genuine partnership with the civil society organizations that are closest to the women most affected by these structural inequalities. Uzbekistan has demonstrated the capacity for substantial institutional reform. The next phase requires turning that capacity toward the more difficult work of making formal change real for women in rural districts, in hierarchical workplaces, and in households where negotiating economic autonomy remains a daily struggle.
Footnotes
[1] Resolution of the Senate of the Oliy Majlis of the Republic of Uzbekistan No. SQ-297-IV, dated 28 May 2021, On the Approval of the Strategy for Achieving Gender Equality in the Republic of Uzbekistan until 2030 https://lex.uz/docs/-5466673 accessed in September 17, 2025
[2] Decree of the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan No. PQ-323, dated July 18, 2022 On Measures to Support Women’s Education in Higher and Professional Educational Institutions https://lex.uz/docs/-6116203?ONDATE2=04.07.2023&action=compare accessed in September 17, 2025
[3] Resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Uzbekistan No. 447, dated August 15, 2022 On Measures to Cover Tuition Fees for Women Studying in the Master’s Programs of State Higher Education Institutions https://lex.uz/docs/-6156799?ONDATE=03.03.2025 accessed in September 17, 2025
[4] ILO report (2025) The Gender Pay Gap in Uzbekistan: Recent Trends and Policy Implications
[5] UNDP (2024) Report on Improving the Care System in the Republic of Uzbekistan, www.undp.org/uzbekistan/publications/report-improving-care-system-republic-uzbekistan
[6] https://www.gazeta.uz/uz/2024/05/07/violence/
[7] https://kun.uz/news/2025/07/28/qolga-tushgan-tizim-selektor-voqeasi-muammoga-kozgu-tutdi
[8]https://kun.uz/news/2019/08/04/men-jinoyatchi-emasman-ehtimoliy-jinoyatchi-ayollarning-23-toifasi-royxati-atrofidagi-gaplar?q=%2Fuz%2Fnews%2F2019%2F08%2F04%2Fmen-jinoyatchi-emasman-ehtimoliy-jinoyatchi-ayollarning-23-toifasi-royxati-atrofidagi-gaplar
Download the full policy brief
Download the full policy brief in Uzbek
