UN Women’s Belén Sanz Luque on Uzbekistan’s progress and the challenges facing women

Ten years of reform have brought Uzbekistan a gender equality strategy, a law addressing domestic violence and one of the region’s highest shares of women in parliament. During a recent visit to Uzbekistan, Belén Sanz Luque, UN Women’s regional director for Europe and Central Asia, sat down with Daryo to discuss the progress made and the challenges that remain.

As part of her visit, Sanz Luque met with the National Statistics Committee, the EU Delegation and civil society groups, taking stock of the progress made and the gaps that remain. For her, the ultimate measure of these reforms is whether they translate into meaningful changes in the everyday lives of women and girls.

“I think at this point what the real measure of success will be is whether all the changes that have been boosted over the last 10 years can result in lived experiences for women and girls,” she told Daryo.

Progress that is not a coincidence

Sanz Luque sees Uzbekistan's progress against a global backdrop of pushback and disinformation about gender equality. She stressed that the country stands out with women holding 38% of seats in Uzbekistan's parliament, well above the Europe and Central Asia average of 26%. Sanz Luque credits policy for this trend, not chance.

"It's the result of concerted efforts, including a gender quota that enabled women candidates to be part of the list," she said. She added that it is not yet parity, but "a very important progress."

The legal framework has grown too, with the National Strategy for Achieving Gender Equality by 2030, a law criminalizing domestic violence and, as she learned during her visit, a new presidential decree on workplace harassment. Access to education has also expanded. Preschool coverage has risen from 27% in 2017 to about 75% in 2025, according to figures reported by the country, which gives girls an early start and frees families to take part in economic life.

A Seat Is Not a Say

Sanz Luque welcomed the 38% statistics, but claims that it hides a weaker picture closer to people's daily lives.

"In Mahalla, women represent like 15% of leadership," she said. "So it's very low compared to this parliamentary representation." She wants regional and local levels to match parliament.

Other figures show the same drop. Women hold 16 of 65 Senate seats, or 24.6%, and about 25% of seats in local councils. They are much rarer among governors, mayors and district heads than among councillors. These numbers measure who holds a seat, not who shapes the decision, and that is the gap between the formal figures and daily life. She did credit one institutional example, the Senate under Chair Tanzila Narbaeva, and its willingness to keep working on legislation.

A crime shielded by shame

Sanz Luque says violence against women was long treated as something to hide.

"It has been naturalized as if it was part of the society. It was invisible, silenced. No one wants to talk about that because it generates shame. It generates fear. Not only for the women but also for the families."

Her answer has three steps. First, document the problem so that we are able to understand the magnitude of the problem. Second, treat it as a public matter, not a private one:

"It's a public problem that has a health consequence for the woman, for the family, for society, for children of course."

Third, and hardest, change the discriminatory social norms that justify violence. To persuade women to speak up, she wants them told plainly that violence against women is a human rights violation, that it is against the law, and that there are institutions that should have the capacity to respond. The aim, she said, is "no impunity."

A case in Namangan this month showed how far that aim still is from reality. Police opened a criminal case on September 12 over the alleged sexual assault of a five-year-old girl at a state kindergarten in Uchkurgan district, and the suspect, the kindergarten's head of maintenance, was detained the same day. He has not been convicted. The girl's mother told a local journalist that the child had become fearful and was afraid to walk past the kindergarten. timescagazeta

The mother told local media that the kindergarten's cameras recorded nothing that day and that the suspect was reportedly responsible for them, and she said his wife offered her a bribe to close the case. The National Agency for Social Protection announced that it will arrange for the family to move to another city and receive housing, rehabilitation and social support.

The response has been swift. A bill passed its first reading in the lower house of parliament that would introduce life imprisonment for raping a child under 14, where the current penalty is 15 to 20 years, and would remove certain limitation periods. Lawmaker Gulrukh Agzamova told parliament that 445 cases of child rape under 14 were opened between 2022 and 2025.

Presidential Administration head Saida Mirziyoyeva expressed that she believes the death penalty should apply to such crimes, though current law does not provide for it. The Constitution prohibits it, so restoring it would require an amendment. Critics argue the debate overlooks the failure of the systems that should have protected the girl.

For Sanz Luque, the lesson is that law needs working institutions behind it. "We inform the society. We raise awareness and we ensure that the institutions are effective, so that there is no impunity." Her message was plain: "Everybody should feel safe in their own home, in their own country."

When the abuse moves online

Online gender-based violence is another issue that is much overlooked. According to Sanz Luque, violence on screen can sometimes reflect violence off-screen.

"The violence that occurs outside of the digital world is not separated from the violence that occurs in the digital world. There is a continuum."

Her concern here is survivors. She says Uzbekistan needs clear standards and mechanisms now, so that any girl who is a victim of online violence knows where to go to be protected and to report it. UN Women encourages countries to pass national laws covering technology-facilitated violence, and she named the European Union's strategy on digital violence as a model.

Research by Kamola Alieva in 2025 shows why this matters in Uzbekistan. Alieva finds that online abuse targets women in public roles, including activists, journalists and public officials, through leaked intimate images, doxxing, smear campaigns and blackmail, and that it pushes women out of public life. Even in a case where Telegram channels sold intimate images and investigators identified 62 victims, prosecutors had to rely on defamation, extortion and pornography articles, because Uzbek law has no explicit offense for non-consensual intimate imagery. Stigma, limited legal aid and weak digital-evidence procedures leave many victims without recourse.

A separate question, Sanz Luque said, is who shapes the technology itself. She wants women to take part in national AI strategies so that AI does not reproduce discrimination.

"Globally, only 24 of 138 national strategies on AI have any mention of gender equality or women. This tells us that there is a lack of awareness of the centrality of this issue."

She hopes Uzbekistan's national strategy will include specific protections for women and girls, and pointed to Latin American laws on the responsible use of AI as examples.

Educated, but carrying the load at home

Sanz Luque rejects the idea that women are unprepared for the economy.

"In a country like Uzbekistan that has boosted women's education in the tertiary sector, the problem is not that women are not prepared. Women are prepared. Women graduate at a higher level. And women are ready to fully enter the labor market."

What stands in the way, Sanz Luque says, is unpaid care work, the unpaid labor of looking after children, the elderly and people with disabilities that sustains families and societies and traditionally falls on women. She argues that the first step to mitigate the issue is to value care work. Where countries have measured it, she noted, unpaid care work can account for up to a quarter of gross domestic product, more than sectors such as infrastructure or even services, which makes it an invisible part of the economy.

Her second step is to manage it between several capable family members it. Research done in Uzbekistan shows what happens when it is not.

"When we ask women, what is the main reason why you needed to quit your work? The first reason that women provide is care responsibilities."

Sanz Luque sees the solution as consisting of two parts. The first is strengthening public services:

"We need to invest in services so that all families have support to bring their children to a kindergarten, for example."

She noted that the other solution lies in society’s attitude:

"In many of our societies, not only in Uzbekistan, we continue to assign the role of care only to women. But when we ask men, men say that they really want to spend more time with their children. Men really want to be a present father."

As Sanz Luque mentions, the importance of shared and minimized care work goes beyond simply households. The free time attained thanks to reduced care work will enable both men and women to work more effectively toward their economic aspirations.

Starting a business versus growing one

Women are 43% of individual entrepreneurs in Uzbekistan but only 17% of corporate ones.

"The challenge is not only for women to initiate a business, but how much the women can grow the business, how much the women can have access to financing."

She also drew attention to informal work. Women dominate the service sector, but many jobs within this sector, including the care sector, is informal. This means that women have less or weaker labor rights, more limited social protection, inadequate pension coverage. Thus, when they retire they do not have enough coverage to be secure. Formal work, she noted, is how women get the same protection and economic independence.

Pay is the other gap. She said women and men must earn the same salary when they work, and noted that Uzbekistan still faces an important gender gap in the salary. Women earned 34% less than men in 2022, according to government statistics, against a global average of about 19%.

The digital divide that opens after graduation

Uzbekistan is training girls for the digital economy. Women made up 36% of STEM graduates in 2022, according to the World Bank, and half the participants in the national One Million Uzbek Coders program were girls. But the numbers fall once training turns into jobs. Sanz Luque mentioned that women's share of the digital sector's workforce is at around 17%. The survey covers only IT Park residents, not the whole sector, but it is close to her figure. The problem, she says, is not talent. It is the step between the classroom and the job.

Closing that gap takes specialized IT education for girls, internships, mentoring and professional networks. It also takes a challenge to an old stereotype: that mathematics is for boys. Girls are as capable in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, and they need the same level of opportunity and trust.

The stakes go beyond employment. If women do not help build the technology, algorithms can reproduce the stereotypes against them. Sanz Luque warns that without firm action the risks to girls in Uzbekistan and worldwide could be enormous. UN Women has discussed ethical standards for AI with the Ministry of Information and Technology, so that safeguards are built in from the start rather than added after harm is done.

Promises Need Funding

Asked what had impressed her most, Sanz Luque did not single out a law or a headline figure. Her answer was more unexpected: a budgeting method. With EU support, UN Women trained the Ministry of Economy and Finance to build a gender lens into public budgets, so that money is set aside for women's and girls' needs across sectors as standard practice. The work began almost two years ago. She already sees results, and she says Uzbekistan is now leading the region on it.

Other pieces are falling into place. The government has set targets for women's economic empowerment as part of its development and poverty eradication strategies. Sanz Luque stresses that none of it works without better data on the labor market, the pay gap and unpaid care work, because policy can only fix what it can measure. The gaps are visible in the figures above: the care data date from 2018, and there is none yet on online violence. Civil society helps by working directly with women, informing them of their rights and bringing a wider range of voices into policy.

That is the point of the work. The aim is for women's empowerment and gender equality to stop being a dream or an aspiration and become a lived reality.