Assisting female refugee settlers in Germany secure employment opportunities

Assisting female refugee settlers in Germany secure employment opportunities

In Germany, female refugees face significant employment challenges, with around two-thirds of them remaining unemployed after eight years, in contrast to 15% of adult male refugees. These intersecting barriers include caregiving responsibilities, language barriers, qualification recognition issues, and cultural norms.

Many arrive with young children, making language courses and job search efforts difficult without accessible childcare. High proficiency in German is often required for jobs in fields like education and healthcare, while men more often find work in low-language jobs like construction or service sectors. Foreign professional degrees, especially in regulated sectors, are hard to validate in Germany, pushing women into lower-skilled jobs. Traditional gender roles and societal expectations can discourage women’s full labor market participation.

Organisations such as the Work for Refugees project and Tent Deutschland address these issues by providing tailored support to refugee women. They focus on language and vocational training adapted to women’s caregiving constraints, facilitate recognition of foreign qualifications, provide or advocate for childcare support, create networks and mentoring opportunities, and promote gender-sensitive job placement services.

One success story is Inna Gissa, a job adviser and counselor for the Work for Refugees Project, who found her first job in Germany in a hotel restaurant despite only knowing basic German. Another is Hala Younis, a former teacher from Syria, who found a job as a customer relationship manager with the online fashion platform Zalando, thanks in part to her experiences at ReDi School of Digital Integration.

Donya, a refugee from Afghanistan, serves as a role model for other women, having successfully integrated into German society and helping other women do the same. She fled Afghanistan with her 19-year-old son due to death threats after her husband disappeared. After completing an eight-month training program and German language courses, she is now working as a care worker for the elderly in Germany.

Grassroots projects and organisations, often staffed by women who have fled to Germany, are playing a crucial role in understanding and addressing the challenges faced by women refugees. Afsaneh Afraze, a psychologist who fled to Germany from Iran in 2014, is critical of the one-size-fits-all approach in integration courses in Germany.

The Work for Refugees project, funded by the Berlin Senate (SenASGIVA), aims to address the challenges facing refugees and help dismantle recruitment obstacles. The project refers clients to other organisations that have special programs for women, such as the Work for Refugees project run by GIZ / Society for Intercultural Coexistence and other cooperation partners, which has been helpful to Donya.

However, the difficulties in finding child care have been an obstacle for many Ukrainian women who fled with their children to Germany after the start of the Russian invasion in 2022. Experience alone does not count for much in Germany if you don't have the paper qualifications to match, making it difficult for many refugees to start again from scratch.

Attacks on women's education began long before the 2021 takeover by the Islamist Taliban in Afghanistan. The recognition of foreign qualifications is difficult in Germany, especially for women from Afghanistan who may not have paperwork to prove their education and training.

Despite these challenges, organisations like Work for Refugees and ReDi School of Digital Integration are making a difference in helping refugees integrate into German society and find employment.

1. Grassroots organizations, led by women who have fled to Germany, are instrumental in understanding and tackling the challenges faced by women refugees.
2. Attacks on women's education existed in Afghanistan prior to the 2021 Islamist Taliban takeover, making the recognition of foreign qualifications difficult for many Afghan refugee women in Germany.
3. In Germany, women refugees face various employment obstacles, such as caregiving duties, language barriers, qualification recognition issues, and cultural norms, which men often do not encounter.
4. In comparison to adult male refugees, around two-thirds of female refugees in Germany remain unemployed after eight years.
5. Organizations like the Work for Refugees project and ReDi School of Digital Integration strive to help refugees integrate into German society, offering tailored support in language, vocational training, qualification recognition, and childcare.

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