ASTANA – A woman receives a long-awaited promotion, but accepting it means moving to another city. Her husband has a career of his own. Whose job should take priority?
Photo credit: istock
Workplace inequality is often measured in hiring, promotions and pay. Yet some of the decisions that shape women’s careers are made far from the office, within families where professional ambitions do not always carry equal weight.
For many couples in Kazakhstan, the answer still favors the man, according to a recent analysis of nationwide survey data examining how families navigate competing professional ambitions. The analysis, by Aigul Zabirova, a professor and chief research fellow at the Kazakhstan Institute for Strategic Studies (KazISS), explores how men and women approach career decisions when work and family responsibilities collide.
Among surveyed men and women with fewer economic and professional resources, roughly six in 10 said the man’s career usually takes priority, a finding that suggests traditional gender expectations can persist even when couples frame their decisions around practical work obligations.
Who gets to put work first?
When work and family responsibilities conflict, 60.5% of men and 58.7% of women surveyed said the man’s career usually takes priority.
Aigul Zabirova. Photo credit: KazISS
The study draws on a public opinion survey commissioned by KazISS and conducted from April 10 to May 10, 2026. It covered 8,000 respondents aged 18 and older across Kazakhstan’s 17 regions and the cities of Astana, Almaty and Shymkent.
Married respondents and those living with a partner were asked whose career typically took precedence when professional and family obligations clashed, including decisions involving overtime, business trips, relocation and promotions.
The difference became more pronounced among respondents with greater resources.
Researchers defined this group as respondents meeting at least two of three criteria: a university degree, a monthly income of at least 201,000 tenge (US$445) per family member, and employment as a manager, entrepreneur or self-employed person. Approximately one-quarter of adult respondents fell into this category.
Among men in this group, 64.6% said their careers took priority, compared with 51.1% of women, a 13.5-percentage-point difference in their responses.
Women with university degrees were less likely to identify the man’s career as the priority, while income alone did not produce a comparable difference. The findings point to a distinction between how families describe their arrangements and how they negotiate professional opportunities.
When attitudes and actions diverge
Around one in five women surveyed in Kazakhstan said they had turned down a career opportunity for family or household reasons in the past five years, regardless of their economic or professional resources.
Researchers found no significant difference between women with greater resources and those with fewer resources in their likelihood of reporting such decisions.
The finding points to a gap between attitudes toward career equality and women’s experiences. Although women with greater resources were less likely to report that men’s careers took priority in their households, they were just as likely to have forgone professional opportunities for family reasons.
This gap between attitudes and experiences raises a broader question: How much does a change in beliefs alter the actual distribution of responsibilities within a household?
Career decisions often involve competing demands, from childcare and household responsibilities to financial considerations and the requirements of a particular job. Yet when such adjustments repeatedly fall to women, the result can reinforce existing inequalities even without an explicit agreement that one career matters more.
When professional obligations reinforce gender inequalities
Gender inequality at home does not always involve explicit expectations about traditional family roles. It can also emerge through everyday decisions about work. A demanding schedule, an important business trip or responsibilities to employees may all be legitimate professional obligations. But when one partner’s commitments consistently take precedence, the other may be left to adjust their career plans.
In her analysis, Zabirova emphasizes that this language can make an unequal arrangement harder to challenge because they are often framed as practical necessities rather than questions of gender equality.
A husband does not have to oppose his wife’s promotion to become the person whose career takes precedence. He may simply point to his existing responsibilities, leaving his partner to reconsider her plans.
Employers can also influence these decisions. Requirements to work overtime, travel frequently or relocate may place additional pressure on households, particularly when one partner is expected to take on more family responsibilities to accommodate the other’s career.
From this perspective, the family becomes an important part of the broader discussion about professional equality. Workplace policies alone may not address inequalities that are reinforced by household expectations.
More education, persistent career trade-offs
Women in Kazakhstan are more likely than men to have higher education, with 53% holding university degrees compared with 44% of men, according to figures cited by Zabirova.
As more women gain university degrees and pursue professional careers, expectations about whose work should take priority may become increasingly contested. The study suggests that education can be associated with a different understanding of career equality, even when it does not eliminate the practical sacrifices women make for their families.
The findings, however, have limitations. Researchers surveyed individuals rather than couples, meaning differences between men’s and women’s responses do not necessarily reflect disagreements within the same households.
The survey also cannot, on its own, establish why women give up professional opportunities or determine how much of the decision results from gender expectations, income differences or personal preferences.
Equality beyond the workplace
The decisions that shape women’s careers are not always made at work. They also unfold at home, when a promotion requires relocation, business travel conflicts with childcare or one partner’s professional commitments take precedence over the other’s.
Changing that pattern requires more than agreeing that men and women should have equal opportunities. It also requires examining how families make decisions about relocation, childcare, working hours and career advancement.
Employers have a role to play as well. Flexible work arrangements, predictable schedules and family-friendly policies can help reduce the pressure on employees to resolve professional conflicts through sacrifices at home.
