Funding from the Gulf for refugee women’s empowerment could enhance self-reliance and women’s autonomy through flexible and innovative economic solutions, yet it risks reinforcing traditional gender roles and perpetuating inequalities.

In 2022 I met Nour,[1] a Syrian refugee woman who lives in rural Türkiye without legal status. Since 2020, when she became pregnant at 14, she has attended the Young Mothers’ Club, receiving healthcare services, vocational training and in-cash assistance, all provided by Shafak, the only non-governmental organisation (NGO) in the town. A poster hangs at the Young Mothers’ Club showing the names of institutional benefactors. The Qatar Red Crescent Society, Kuwaiti Sheikh Abdullah Al-Nouri Charity Society and the Government of Saudi Arabia are some of the major donors, alongside smaller contributions from UN agencies and others.

Nour was one among many other refugee women whom I met during my doctoral research, which focused on refugee-led organisations’ everyday practices of gender equality in their communities. As the fieldwork unfolded, I realised that many refugee women in Türkiye share similar life trajectories which lead them to the doors of NGOs, such as Shafak, to seek help for themselves and their families.

How donors’ approaches to women’s empowerment affect refugee women

Refugee women are, and will continue to be, the focus of global gender policies and growing volumes of humanitarian funding from the Gulf States. Yet, we know almost nothing about how these donors interpret global gender policies or how their understandings shape refugee women’s lives. Nor do we know much about women refugees’ views on how services they receive from the Gulf-funded NGOs impact their lives and aspirations. Policymakers addressing the impacts of donors’ approaches to refugee women’s empowerment have predominantly focused on Western donors. They have overlooked the role that non-Western donors’ approaches to women’s empowerment play on the inclusion or exclusion of refugee women with intersecting identities, including racialised and underrepresented groups.

Drawing on interviews with the employees of Gulf-funded organisations that operate in Türkiye and across the border in Northwestern Syria, and the refugees they work with, I argue that Gulf funding for empowering refugee women offers innovative solutions to economic challenges. However, some initiatives might reinforce traditional gender roles. While some women refugees view the reproduction of gender roles positively as a means to assert their autonomy, others emphasise the need to transform these roles to achieve genuine empowerment, enhance their well-being, and address gender inequalities effectively.

The Gulf donors’ rising humanitarian funding and commitment to women’s empowerment

The four richest Gulf states – Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – have become major humanitarian donors over the last two decades. These governments have been among the top ten humanitarian donors to Syria, Türkiye and Lebanon since the outbreak of the conflict in Syria in 2012.[2] They have also forged collaborations with multilateral humanitarian organisations and Western donors.

Humanitarian partnerships between the Government of Canada and the UAE, and the joint Kuwait-UN Humanitarian Pledging Conference for Syria in 2015, signify a closer dialogue between Western humanitarian donors and the Gulf states on achieving global goals. The Gulf donors have also committed to the gender equality and women’s empowerment component of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), leading to the UAE’s official pledge to “prioritise equal opportunities for refugee women and girls and inclusion of marginalised people” in its SDG efforts in 2021.

Policymakers note the humanitarian funding cuts by the Western donors and predict that the upward trend of non-Western funding will be one of the defining hallmarks of global policymaking in the coming decades, leading to calls for a better understanding of the non-Western donors’ influence on the implementation of global gender goals.

Earlier research has demonstrated how the gender norms that donors seek to promote impact the implementation of women’s empowerment programmes. Increased volumes of funding for empowering refugee women were not welcomed by all. Some refugees and experts were enthusiastic, while others suspected that empowerment discourses were becoming co-opted and refugees becoming rhetorical tools for these emerging powers’ political aims in the region. At the same time, policymakers in the organisations that received funding were wary of mismatches between donors’ assumptions about the root causes of women’s marginalised positions in their societies and their actual experiences, needs and demands.

Opportunities: flexible funding to meet refugee women’s needs and demands

While comprehensive data on Gulf donors’ humanitarian funding is not available, many of the organisations supported by Gulf donors provide a variety of programmes focusing on women and girls. These programmes often fall under two categories: projects to generate income for women via training or loans, and housing solutions.

Many refugee women I interviewed highlighted the growing impact of non-governmental and refugee-led organisations funded by Gulf donors in improving their daily lives and helping them achieve their life goals. Improved access to long-term housing was one of the most pronounced achievements of the Gulf-funded policies that focus on refugee women’s well-being. These housing projects typically involve upgrading temporary tent settlements into permanent structures with concrete walls and providing shelters for widows and female-headed households. A significant benefit of these programmes lies in the flexibility they offer to implementing organisations, allowing for creative solutions that more effectively address the daily challenges and needs of refugee women.

One interviewee, a mother of two, explained how her tent was transformed into a house, thanks to the efforts of the Gulf donors:

“When we were internally displaced in Syria and lost my husband, we started to live in a tent in the North. Soon enough I realised that we are not able to live in tents for a long time, we deserve to have decent houses. My friends and I started to build concrete walls around the tents we were living in because there was no other way to deal with the harsh winter. We also asked the camp managers to help us to maintain the walls, but they were not supportive. And one day, we learnt that a Gulf donor bought the land we lived on from the landlord. They had clear criteria of who gets to live where or whether we can own this property or if it will be like some long-term lease. But we managed to keep our solid housing and feel safe, thanks to this funding.”

I have heard many similar stories. These housing policies foster a sense of safety, reduce worries about family care, free up time for income-generating activities and enhance refugee women’s autonomy in decision-making for themselves and their families. As such, the Gulf donors play a crucial role in promoting the self-reliance and independence of women refugees.

Challenges: excluding certain groups of refugee women, reproducing traditional gender norms

While some refugee women highlight the Gulf funding’s significance for their self-reliance and independence, others express discomfort with how income-generating activities have inadvertently excluded them or perpetuated new forms of gender inequality.

Income-generating initiatives supported by Gulf donors often concentrate on traditional feminine skills such as textile work and cooking. They may also include a loan component aimed at providing short-term financial assistance to eligible individuals to meet their families’ needs. These initiatives operate under the assumption that many displaced women have experience primarily as housewives and limited exposure to income-generating activities outside the home. While beneficial for earning some income and fostering self-reliance, these approaches tend to reinforce traditional gender roles and do not necessarily equip women with new skills relevant to their countries of asylum.

Many refugee women who previously had no work experience have entered the workforce in asylum countries like Türkiye due to increased economic pressures. In this context, they often find that their skills are insufficient for the demands of the jobs available to them. This is echoed by a Syrian woman who works for a Gulf-funded humanitarian NGO:

“The problem with these programmes is that they do not match with the required skills for available jobs and hence, women are pushed to either continue to try to have some income from their handicraft, use their feminine skills to get jobs if they are lucky, or look for other ways of generating income, such as marriage and sex work. There is nothing wrong with these types of work and solutions, however they also do not respond to the aspirations of many women I know.”

Her words sum up the ironic and unforeseen consequence of policies intended to empower women perpetuating gender-based marginalisation.

Similarly, single women refugees and women refugees with diverse sexual orientations are often told that they are not eligible for these programmes as they are neither widows nor divorced. An employee of a Syrian refugee-run organisation mentioned: “To qualify for loans from us, one must demonstrate need, often linked to being a widow or divorced. We do not have funding to support single women or sexual and gender minorities.”

Where to go from here?

The Gulf States’ humanitarian funding for refugee women’s empowerment has the potential to open new pathways leading to policies that promote empowerment and self-sufficiency. Many refugee women, grappling with challenges in livelihood security, violence and achieving their aspirations, have expressed appreciation for the empowerment approaches of Gulf-funded projects. However, other refugee women have expressed concerns about the implications of these policies. They argue that women are often relegated to traditional gender roles. This focus may exclude single women, those with varied life goals and individuals with diverse sexual orientations.

Recognising both the opportunities and obstacles presented by Gulf funding for women’s empowerment underscores the importance of gaining a clearer understanding of how these policies are developed, perceived by refugee women themselves and put into practice on the ground. Better understanding the perspectives of Gulf donors in promoting women’s empowerment, can facilitate more efficient and coordinated global policy-making efforts. By shedding light on the perspectives and experiences of women refugees, it may also lead to a new articulation of the concept of women’s empowerment.

 

Merve Erdilmen
PhD Candidate, Department of Political Science, McGill University, Canada
merve.erdilmen@mail.mcgill.ca

 

[1] Nour is a pseudonym. I have changed the names of all my participants to protect their identities.

[2] For funding breakdowns see UNOCHA country profiles https://fts.unocha.org/countries/overview

 

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