Data on female rectors: Some positive news from Kazakhstan

Having recently celebrated International Women’s Day 2025 on 8 March, it’s a particularly opportune moment to reflect on how far we’ve come – and how much further we must go to ensure gender equality in higher education.

Gender dilemmas are complex in Central Asia, a region where, as reported for University World News in 2016, female participation both markedly exceeded the world average at the time and, in other countries, fell well below that rate.

Almost a decade on from that analysis, we had an opportunity to revisit the data, investigating education and gender statistics in four of the Central Asian countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) for a new open access book chapter, “Current and Emerging Issues in Gender Equality in Education: What does the data tell us?” This has been published in a pioneering new book on gender and education in Central Asia.

Regional divergency

We set the context by examining countries’ current position in terms of gender equality, which showed that Central Asian countries are relatively more gender equal than the world average, but that the regional scenario is quite divergent.


Graph 1: Central Asian countries in the Gender Inequality Index (2021)

From there, we examined the gendered educational landscape from school to higher education, analysed gender differences in fields of study in higher education to understand patterns of gendered behaviour in education, surveyed the role of female educators – namely, teachers and researchers – and finally explored whether educational achievements for women are translating into societal leadership gains.

This is important because, in theoretical terms, the greater the number of highly qualified women, the more gender balanced society becomes, as women are better equipped to take up leadership roles.

However, in practice, this is not the case – not in Central Asia and not in any other world region – due to macro-level structural sexism that entrenches sex-based discrimination into societal frameworks and results in inequalities in social outcomes.

Female participation in the labour force in Kazakhstan is quite high (over 60%), although Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan exhibit notable gender gaps. Most women who work in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan do so in the services industry whereas in Tajikistan, the majority of women work in agriculture.

Choice of field of study and, subsequently, choice of occupation have significant consequences for earning potential, contributing to the gender pay gap which continues to exist – at a global level, women only make 77 cents for every dollar earned by men.

Furthermore, occupations considered to be more ‘female’ such as caregiving, early years teaching and secretarial work continue to be devalued, leading to lower prestige and more limited options (conscious or otherwise) for women to occupy or be seen to be belonging to societal power structures.

In Central Asia, although Soviet-era legislation banning women from certain jobs was finally lifted in 2021 in Kazakhstan, outdated gender stereotypes remain across the region, often in families, and women are still not treated as equals in the workplace.

Higher education leadership

With these system-level barriers in mind, we decided to review the data on female leaders in important societal sectors, including higher education leadership. As establishments at the pinnacle of the formal education system, rectors (higher education institution leaders) occupy important and visible leadership roles.

In Central Asia, rectors of publicly funded institutions have been historically appointed directly by the government and, although this practice is being phased out in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the connection between government and higher education remains close and adds significance to the role of the rector.

This notwithstanding, data on rectors based on gender has not, to our knowledge, ever been collected before. As such, for the chapter, we collected data from all 407 public and private higher education institutions in the region.

This data demonstrates for the first time the sizeable distance that remains to achieve gender equality in Central Asian higher education. Women rectors are in a small minority in all countries, from just 5.3% of the total in both Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, to 26.1% in Kazakhstan.


Graph 2: Proportion of female rectors of Central Asian higher education institutions, 2024

Although global data is not systematically collected, evidence from other regions suggests that around 15%-20% of rectors are female and in this light, the figure from Kazakhstan offers a more positive message for gender equality.

A foundation for action

While we believe there is a lot to be learned from this new dataset, it’s important not to rely on data alone. Data is not neutral, and it doesn’t capture the root causes or structural effects of gender inequality. Thus, our aim in collecting and publishing this new data on female leadership in higher education in Central Asia is to provide a foundation for action.

What can other countries learn from Kazakhstan’s relative success; for instance, its stronger participation rates and educational completion rates for all students, its higher female labour force participation rate and its generally higher rates of gender equality?

How can universities support females in middle or senior management positions into leadership roles? And how can we keep chipping away, through both small and large actions, to ensure that gender stops being a barrier to reaching the top?

Emma Harden-Wolfson is assistant professor in higher education policy and leadership at McGill University, Canada. For other University World News articles by Emma Harden-Wolfson, click here. Lyazzat Shakirova is a PhD student at the University of Toronto, Canada. Some parts of this article were originally featured in the authors’ publication, ‘Current and Emerging Issues in Gender Equality in Education: What does the data tell us?’

This article is a commentary. Commentary articles are the opinion of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of University World News.