  We present a preliminary analysis of the stellar populations in the central
parsecs of a sample of 22 Seyfert 2 galaxies, based on a careful separation of
nebular emission and stellar light in high-spatial resolution HST-STIS spectra.
10% of the surveyed nuclei display stellar populations of intermediate age, 1-2
Gyr old, whereas the remaining targets appear to be evenly split between
objects showing only very old stellar populations and nuclei requiring also an
additional blue featureless component, which we characterise by means of very
young, few-Myr-old stars.
  The small fraction of stellar population of intermediate age seems to argue
against the presence of such a young component, however, since the short
lifetime of O-stars would imply recurrent star-formation episodes and the
build-up over the last 1-2 Gyr of a detectable intermediate-age population.
  Additionally, a correlation between the luminosity of such a blue component
and the emission from highly-ionised species, together with the general absence
of Wolf-Rayet features, further suggests that the featureless continuum arises
from the central engine rather than from star-forming regions.
  We discuss our results in the framework of the unification paradigm and of
models for star formation close to supermassive black holes.
