The Employment Structure of Women-Led Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in Kazakhstan

Kuralay Nurgaliyeva, Kuralay Toleubekova

2026

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DOI 10.47703/ejgs.v3i2.123
Data confidence 70 medium
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Abstract

This study examines how women-led small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are represented in Kazakhstan’s employment structure and how that representation changed between 2016 and 2025. The study aims to assess the level and organisational structure of employment in women-led small and medium-sized enterprises in Kazakhstan during 2016–2025. The empirical base consisted of ten annual observations based on data from the Bureau of National Statistics of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Descriptive dynamics analysis, Pearson correlation coefficients, and parsimonic models of ordinary least squares are applied. Also, it was found that the total share of employment in enterprises headed by women increased from 31.2% in 2016 to 34.0% in 2025, with the main increase occurring after 2022. The corresponding shares increased by 3.1 p.p. in both legal entities and individual enterprises and by 3.3 p.p. in farms. Within women-led SMEs, legal entities remained the largest employment category in 2025 (52.7%), followed by individual enterprises (41.9%) and farms (5.5%). The strong negative correlation between the shares of individual enterprises and legal entities (r = −0.993) primarily reflects their compositional relationship rather than economic substitution. Regression estimates are therefore interpreted as descriptive associations, not causal effects. The findings show a modest expansion of women-led employment without a fundamental change in its organisational composition.