Although a number of studies investigated the underrepresentation of women in STEM in Kazakhstan, there is scarce literature closely examining women’s experiences in IT separately from other STEM disciplines. A lot of international research looking at women in IT focus on female students’ enrollment in computing majors and investigates primary, secondary and high school initiatives and experiences that might influence gender differences in school students' decision-making to pursue a major in IT. Interestingly, the further female students are in their school years, the lower self-efficacy in STEM they have (Yu & Jen, 2021). Yet, research addressing the issue of women’s low representation in IT studying the population at higher education started to emerge just recently (Holanda & Silva, 2022).

The underrepresentation of women in IT fields is deemed crucial due to its impact on the effective use of talent, as well as the importance of diversity in maintaining economic competitiveness. Although experiences during school predict girls’ persistence in computer-science majors in college, a closer investigation of young women’s experiences in IT majors in tertiary education might contribute to providing more insight into understanding how women progress through the pipeline. This study aims to explore undergraduate women’s perspectives on the challenges they face and success strategies they use in pursuing their academic degree in IT, and what they see as important factors to successfully navigate through the pipeline.

The proposed Research questions are:
1. What factors do undergraduate women see as important for their success in IT majors?
2. What are the challenges that undergraduate women in the IT field face when pursuing their
academic degrees?
3. What are their success strategies?