This is one solution. If you want to make it more generic, you can use the StringUtils library.

String value = "{first_name = naresh,last_name = kumar,gender = male}";
value = value.substring(1, value.length()-1);           //remove curly brackets
String[] keyValuePairs = value.split(",");              //split the string to creat key-value pairs
Map<String,String> map = new HashMap<>();               

for(String pair : keyValuePairs)                        //iterate over the pairs
{
    String[] entry = pair.split("=");                   //split the pairs to get key and value 
    map.put(entry[0].trim(), entry[1].trim());          //add them to the hashmap and trim whitespaces
}

For example you can switch

 value = value.substring(1, value.length()-1);

to

 value = StringUtils.substringBetween(value, "{", "}");

if you are using StringUtils which is contained in apache.commons.lang package.

There is no need to reinvent the wheel. The Google Guava library provides the Splitter class.

Here's how you can use it along with some test code:

package com.sandbox;

import com.google.common.base.Splitter;
import org.junit.Test;

import java.util.Map;

import static org.junit.Assert.assertEquals;

public class SandboxTest {

    @Test
    public void testQuestionInput() {
        Map<String, String> map = splitToMap("A=4 H=X PO=87");
        assertEquals("4", map.get("A"));
        assertEquals("X", map.get("H"));
        assertEquals("87", map.get("PO"));
    }

    private Map<String, String> splitToMap(String in) {
        return Splitter.on(" ").withKeyValueSeparator("=").split(in);
    }

}

Split the string by , to get individual map entries. Then split them by = to get the key and the value.

Map<String, String> reconstructedUtilMap = Arrays.stream(utilMapString.split(","))
            .map(s -> s.split("="))
            .collect(Collectors.toMap(s -> s[0], s -> s[1]));

Note: As pointed out by Andreas@ in the comments, this is not a reliable way to convert between a map and a string

EDIT: Thanks to Holger for this suggestion.

Use s.split("=", 2) to ensure that the array is never larger than two elements. This will be useful to not lose the contents (when the value has =)

Example: when the input string is "a=1,b=2,c=3=44=5555" you will get {a=1, b=2, c=3=44=5555}

Earlier (just using s.split("=")) will give {a=1, b=2, c=3}

You can do that with Guava's Splitter.MapSplitter:

Map<String, String> properties = Splitter.on(",")
    .withKeyValueSeparator(":")
    .split(inputString);