New insights from displaced women reveal limits of one-size-fits-all employment approach

BARCELONA — Women refugees are underemployed or unemployed in greater numbers than other groups of the population. Yet data around this group is limited and fails to understand the varying challenges these women face in accessing the job market, experts from the International Rescue Committee told Devex.

Data collected and published in a new report by the organization aims to address this gap and highlight the shared and different experiences of refugee women in finding employment.

The “real evidence gap” regarding refugee women is a consistent challenge, said Daphne Jayasinghe, head of policy for Europe at the International Rescue Committee. “A lot has been written on women’s economic empowerment, but how it is understood by women themselves has not been well, extensively researched,” she said.

There also tends to be a “shortfall” in disaggregated data by displacement status and gender in national plans and reviews on progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals. This information is critical for organizations to understand priorities, and ensure that interventions support populations and that policies are inclusive, Jayasinghe said.

According to her colleague, Clare Clingain, the research coordinator for the report, existing research and conversations also tend to focus on displaced women as “populations as a whole.” IRC’s aim, however, was “not looking at this grand macro-level or even population level. We’re trying to zoom in to the voices of displaced women,” she said.

An intentional approach 

Through a combination of focus group discussions and semi-structured interviews, the organization gained insights from 83 displaced women and 23 displaced men, as well as 23 key informants such as NGO workers, across three countries.

These activities took place over the course of 10 months — ending in January this year — and were carried out in-person by local staff in Germany, Niger, and Kenya. These countries were chosen, in part, for their large, albeit very different, refugee populations, Clingain said. They are also places in which the organization is looking to increase its presence, and “wanted to have research to inform subsequent pilots and programming more broadly in these contexts,” she added.

Purposeful sampling — where the sample group is deliberately identified based on its experience — and snowball sampling — utilizing the network of one participant to find others who would have relevant insights to share — were used to reach the target group and involve refugee women who would otherwise be difficult to get in touch with through formal mechanisms.

In the discussions and interviews that followed, a list of questions was designed to guide the conversation, yet still allow ideas to flow and issues to crop up in conversation, Clingain said. This approach also enabled the women to describe their realities in a way that was familiar to them as opposed to “forcing language or terminology or abstract concepts onto them,” she added.

The type of qualitative data that was collected as a result not only lends itself to better understanding the issues but to “moving people to act and providing more of an emotional connection,” Clingain said.

What did the new data tell us?

Across the three contexts, the level of pre-existing data varied considerably. In Germany, significantly more research was available around refugee women and economic empowerment than in Niger, where there was “little to nothing aside from NGO reports,” Clingain said. Meanwhile, in Kenya, there had been research done around economic empowerment, but with no particular focus on refugee women.

The data collected from the focus group discussions and interviews largely confirmed what was already assumed about the institutional barriers facing women, Clingain said. But it also highlighted the heterogeneity in their experiences and how a one size fits all approach, even within a single context, doesn’t work in tackling those barriers or designing a program, she added. In Kenya, for example, there were significant variations in how Congolese and Somalian refugee women perceived their social networks and who they considered to be economically empowered within those.

Jayasinghe agreed that the research didn’t provide any big surprises. Child care, for example, which was identified as a barrier to employment for refugee women in all three contexts, is also a challenge for women globally. But the insights did highlight some of the particular challenges facing displaced women who are socially isolated and struggle to build networks as newcomers, she said.

Next steps 

The coronavirus pandemic has delayed the organization’s plans to design and implement pilot programs based on the new findings, but three pilots are now up and running in Niger. These seek to address the issues highlighted in the research, such as the need for internship placement opportunities and specific skills training.

This new data also builds on earlier research by IRC, which examined how rules and regulations prevent refugee women from seeking jobs and economic opportunities.

“We're in a position now to really point to the challenges [of] women who have been displaced as well as women who are in humanitarian or fragile settings,” said Jayasinghe, noting that the objective is to see those challenges well understood and reflected by the Beijing +25 Action Coalition.

Update Oct. 1, 2020: This article has been updated to clarify the data collection period was over the course of 10 months and was carried out in Niger, among other counties.

Devex, with support from our partner UN Women, is exploring how data is being used to inform policy and advocacy to advance gender equality. Gender data is crucial to make every woman and girl count. Visit the Focus on: Gender Data page for more. Disclaimer: The views in this article do not necessarily represent the views of UN Women.