The Second Shift Goes Digital: Gendered Barriers to IT Leadership in Kazakhstan

Abstract

This article examines how women in Kazakhstan’s IT sector balance caregiving responsibilities with leadership advancement. Using an explanatory sequential mixed-­methods design, the study combines workforce data from 32 IT companies with qualitative interviews and group discussions with women in managerial and executive roles. The quantitative findings reveal persistent disparities in executive advancement despite the substantial representation of women in the workforce and mid-level management. Qualitative analysis identifies three interconnected mechanisms that shape these inequalities: work–care temporal conflict, the symbolic penalties attached to organisational flexibility, and relational exclusion through limited mentorship, weak role modelling, and unequal access to informal leadership networks. The findings demonstrate that women’s underrepresentation in executive leadership cannot be explained by individual choices or organisational practices alone, but rather emerges from the interaction between workplace cultures, caregiving expectations and institutional arrangements that continue to assign primary care responsibility to women. By extending feminist concepts such as the ideal worker and the maternal wall into the post-­Soviet context, the article argues that the IT sector in Kazakhstan reflects a hybrid configuration in which technological modernisation coexists with traditional gender roles. The study contributes to debates on gender, leadership, and social policy by linking women’s leadership trajectories to broader family and labour policy arrangements.