The formal labor market in Kazakhstan is heavily gendered, with women representing over 70% of all employers in traditionally “female” spheres, such as health care and education (Asian Development Bank, 2011, 2016).  Men, on the other hand, are overrepresented in the industrial sector, which tends to be the most profitable with the highest wages (ADB, 2011). The recent statistics suggest that now women in Kazakhstan are earning about 33% less than their men colleagues every month (ADB, 2016). The occupational segregation noticed in Kazakhstani labor market along with the wage gap impedes the economic development of the country and is highly undesirable from the point of view of the development of innovation capacity and knowledge economy of the country.

One of the reasons of underrepresentation of women in high paying STEM fields lies at higher education level. There seem to some major factors that influence the gendered patterns in STEM fields. Women tend to have lower enrolment rates in STEM disciplines at universities and also are more likely to “leak” from the STEM educational pipeline as they advance in their education. According to ADB, in 2011, the natural sciences were dominated by male students with 31.6% of female students in these fields, whereas in the humanities, the percent of female students was 74.2%. More recent data from UNESCO Institute of Statistics (2016) suggests that engineering, manufacturing and construction disciplines in Kazakhstan are also male-dominated and female students make up only 31.88 % of the overall population of undergraduate students in these fields. This is especially surprising as, in international assessments, Kazakhstani female students usually score very high in STEM relevant domains. In PISA 2015 for instance, they displayed minimal difference with male students in mathematics and even outscored male students in science (OECD, 2017).

In this context, the purpose of this research is to analyze the experiences of female higher education students currently enrolled in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines in universities in Kazakhstan. The study will provide an answer to two main research questions:

RQ1. What are the experiences of female higher education students who pursue an education in STEM disciplines in Kazakhstan? 

RQ2. What are the factors which shape female higher education students’ advancement through the STEM pipeline at undergraduate and graduate levels?

Researchers tend to agree that higher education is a particularly critical stage for the loss of women in the pursuit of STEM careers. While women enroll in STEM majors, their experiences in higher education discourage them from pursuing the chosen career path (Powell et al., 2000). The research reviewed identifies a multitude of factors that influence the gendered patterns in STEM fields (Burke & Mattis, 2011; Wang, 2013). Consistently with the literature on women’s progression in STEM as well as students’ persistence and retention literature, the factors of women’s progression and retention in STEM educational pipeline might be grouped as individual/background (eg. high school achievement measured by GPA, ethnicity, parental educational background and profession, school quality, etc.) and institutional/organizational factors (type of university, institutional support, interaction with faculty, peer support etc.).

In order to understand female higher education students’ experiences in STEM and factors contributing to retention and progression in STEM, in-depth descriptive qualitative interview design will be used in the study. This type of design strives to achieve an only surface interpretation of the data to arrive at an in-depth description of a phenomenon, which most of the participants of the study or other researchers would agree on (Sandelowski, 2000). Five universities in North Kazakhstan, West Kazakhstan, East Kazakhstan, South Kazakhstan, and Central Kazakhstan (STEM focused technical universities or universities with STEM departments) will be chosen for conducting the study. Around 25 female undergraduate and 25 graduate students (5 undergraduate and 5 graduate students from each university) will be interviewed with the size determined by both representative variability and saturation point. The potential participants will be selected purposefully as well as via snow-balling, whereby the participants would be asked to provide contacts of other female students. The participants will vary on several characteristics, such as year of study, disciplinary affiliation, school background (STEM school/non-STEM school), university type, etc. The interviews will be conducted by one of the researchers at the time convenient for the participants and will be recorded upon obtaining written consent. The recordings of the interviews will be translated, transcribed and thematically coded. The process of coding will be guided by the themes emerging from the literature, as well as any unexpected themes. The data will be analyzed using thematic coding and across-group comparisons of themes. Member checking will be used to ensure researcher triangulation and to increase the reliability of the study results. The expected results of the study will include qualitative themes will be developed from the collected qualitative data as a result of data analysis guided by a conceptual framework developed from the literature.

Consistently with Western research, the factors related to young women’s progression and retention in STEM in Kazakhstan will fall to three major categories: individual level factors, institutional level factors and contextual level factors. Consistently with gender theories and Social Cognitive Career Theory, on contextual level, the following factors: cultural values with respect to gender, influences of ideology about role of women in society, and their participation in STEM professions, societal influences, economic influences might be were found to be influencing the female students’ retention and progression in the STEM pipeline. Although girls in Kazakhstan demonstrate high performance in STEM and are well supported well at secondary education level, we believe that the data collected in this study will evidence that the HE environment is less welcoming for them. Therefore, on institutional level, such factors as a lack of support and mentorship to female students, lack of female faculty, who could serve as role models and lack of peer support might be identified as influencing the students’ retetion and progression in STEM. On individual level, such factors as a lack of confidence and lack of expereince in STEM might be influencing the educational decisions of female students. Being STEM students, female students might receive subtle messages that they do not fit STEM career tracks and they are more likely to choose careers outside STEM and leave STEM education as they advance in their education.

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