THE PARTICIPATION OF FOREIGN LOCAL COMMUNITY INSTITUTIONS IN GENDER-BASED CAREER GUIDANCE: AN ANALYTICAL REVIEW

Abstract

This article presents a narrative analytical review of the role played by local community institutions in supporting gender-equitable career guidance for adolescents, drawing on international experience and its potential implications for the Uzbek mahalla system. Drawing on empirical and policy literature published between 2022 and 2026 — international-organization reports, a peer-reviewed empirical study, and Uzbek pedagogical scholarship — the study examines how community-based programs in Asia and Central Asia, together with a comparative case from Turkey, shape young people’s occupational aspirations along gender lines. The analysis demonstrates that adolescents’ career choices remain strongly conditioned by internalized gender roles, and that community-level actors — whether formal youth organizations abroad or the traditional Uzbek mahalla — can either reinforce or challenge these patterns depending on how deliberately they are engaged in career-guidance activity. The article argues that adapting selected elements of foreign community-based career-guidance models to the mahalla’s existing social infrastructure offers a realistic pathway toward reducing occupational segregation in Uzbekistan, and it proposes practical directions for mahalla–school partnership based on the reviewed evidence.