Blog Articles

The European Parliament’s Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality (FEMM) recently ordered a study on ‘Female refugees and asylum seekers: the issue of integration’. It looks at women’s needs in relation to housing and living conditions, relevant international and European legislation, funding programmes, and policy measures.

Single adult refugee women are one of the most vulnerable group of refugees as they often lack financial means, professional qualifications and family support. Female refugees and asylum seekers tend to have more difficulties in providing evidence for their application than men, and they sometimes choose not to report their stories as they experienced sexual torture or gender-based violence. Many women and girls lack the means to travel or know their rights and the risks they face during the dangerous routes to Europe, putting them at risk of falling victim to trafficking. Being displaced interrupts adolescent girls’ education which increases their vulnerability to exploitation, abuse, unwanted pregnancy and subsequent unsafe abortion.

In the host country husbands, fathers and brothers tend to attribute their female family members the role of upholding the memory and traditions of the country of origin by caring for the children, looking after the household, providing food and continuing to speak the native language. This impacts on women’s integration process through isolation and social, economic and cultural dependency, which leads to discrimination and barriers to access services, training and jobs (often confined to a gendered low-paid domestic labour sector). As Social Platform we have a position paper on investing in services and work-life balance to improve gender equality, which describes many of the gender-related barriers and gives EU recommendations on how to overcome them. Our position includes a specific focus on the rights of female migrant carers.

Refugee and asylum-seeking women are both productive and resilient, and with the right support they can become active and dynamic participants in society. NGOs play a key role in supporting refugees and asylum-seeking women to become directly involved in planning, implementing and monitoring integration.

Reception and integration policies must be gender-sensitive to succeed. Such services could include information about services and health care assistance, training of female mediators to assist women, training to enhance female refugees’ skills and education. EU funds can be used for this, such as the European Social Fund, the Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme and the Asylum, Migration, Integration Fund which all pay particular attention to gender equality. The FEMM committee’s study also recommends the exchange of promising practices between Member States, and lists a few examples.

You can also read our blogs about the European Commission’s work ‘Towards an EU Action Plan on Integration of Third-Country Nationals’ and ‘Which innovative financial instruments can help tackle the refugee crisis?’.