This research examines the pattern of women’s participation in formal political institutions in post-Soviet Kazakhstan since 1996, focusing on how women’s political agency and representation is exercised within the restrictive context of the country’s authoritarian regime. The thesis employs the frameworks of authoritarian institutions and women’s political representation, using scholarship on Sovietisation as an overarching concept. The research examines women’s political participation from three main angles: women’s personal ambitions and motivations towards political office and the related representative functions; descriptive and substantive representation; and the impact of serving in parliament on political careers in Kazakhstan. This qualitative exploratory research is based on descriptive statistics data and interviews with current and former female politicians at the national and local levels, and other actors involved in women’s political recruitment and participation. Women’s representation in Kazakhstan’s parliament began to increase in 2007, coinciding with the final stage of constitutional reforms aimed at concentrating power around the presidency. This thesis argues that the pattern of women’s political representation increasingly resembles that of the Soviet period, and is not emerging naturally from women’s activism or motivation. This analysis demonstrates that the socio-demographic characteristics of female members of parliament in Kazakhstan today resemble those of female delegates during the Soviet period, when the country was the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic. Substantive representation further supports this argument by demonstrating that the role of female parliamentarians is largely concentrated on relaying the regime’s messaging to the population in a manner similar to the propaganda of the Soviet period. For women, the value of serving in parliament is decreasing and does not advance their political careers. This research contributes to the scant literature on women’s participation in institutional politics in post-Soviet authoritarian regimes, providing a gender perspective on the scholarship of representation in autocracies.