Exploring Stakeholders' Interventions in Addressing Gender Roles and Norms that Obstruct Refugee Women's Access to Higher Education: A Case of Bidibidi Refugee Settlement in Northern Uganda
Abstract
Gender roles and norms are known to affect women more than their male counterparts disproportionately. In effect, it discourages women and denies them the opportunity to fulfil their potential in various sectors/fields. Specifically, this study focuses on stakeholders' interventions in addressing gender roles and norms obstructing refugee women in Uganda from accessing higher education. The study was carried out in Bidibidi Refugee Settlement in Northern Uganda. The study used the qualitative research approach anchored in the advocacy worldview using intersectionality with a liberal feminist perspective as a philosophical lens. Using purposive and snowball sampling, 49 participants took part in the study. Using one-on-one interviews and focus group discussions, the study found that some stakeholders' initiatives have facilitated refugee women's access to higher education. Initiatives such as awareness raising, career guidance and mentorship, and legal and policy frameworks, among others, have been put in place to promote refugee women's access to higher education. Nevertheless, the study found that these initiatives have not adequately addressed the cultural, gender, socio-economic, and structural barriers that are still hindering refugee women's access to higher education. Thus, the study recommends that stakeholders should undertake more rigorous and intensive sensitization and advocacy to raise community awareness on aspects of gender roles and norms to break the gender-role stereotyping that is largely hindering refugee women's access to higher education. Also, the study recommends that livelihood and skilling programmes should target women refugees to curb the risk of being forced into desperate survival situations. These should be continuously monitored and evaluated, and refugee women are also encouraged to seek family planning services to relieve them from the childcare role so as to enable access and participation in higher education
Downloads
References
Ashbourne, L. M., Tam, D., Al Jamal, A., Baobaid, M., & Badahdah, A. (2021). Arab families’ stories of migration from war zones: Gender roles and family relations in flux. Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 19(2), 114-127. https://doi.org/10.1080/15562948.2020.1736363
Baker, S., Ramsay, G., & Lenette, C. (2019). Students from refugee and asylum seeker backgrounds and meaningful participation in higher education: From peripheral to fundamental concern. Widening Participation and Lifelong Learning, 21(2), 4-19. http://doi.org/10.5456/WPLL.21.2.4
Betts, A., Chaara, I., Omata, N., & Sterck, O. (2019). Refugee economies in Uganda: what difference does the self-reliance model make? Refugee Studies Centre.
Bohnet, H., & Schmitz-Pranghe, C. (2019). Uganda: a role model for refugee integration? (BICC Working Paper, 2/2019). Bonn International Center for Conversion (BICC). https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-62871-2
Boucher, F., & Gördemann, J. (2021). The European Union and the global compacts on refugees and migration: A philosophical critique. interventions, 23(2), 227-249. https://securelivelihoods.org
Crenshaw, K. (1989). "Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics," University of Chicago Legal Forum, 140:139-167, Article 8.
Available at: https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol1989/iss1/8
Dryden-Peterson, S. (2016). Refugee education: The crossroads of globalization. Educational Researcher, 45(9), 473-482, https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X16683398
Dahya, N., & Dryden- Peterson, S. (2017). Tracing pathways to higher education for refugees: the role of virtual support networks and mobile phones for women in refugee camps. Comparative Education, 53 (2), 284-301. Taylor &Francis Group.
Dryden-Peterson, S, Dahya, N., & Adelman, E. (2017). "Pathways to Educational Success among Refugees: Connecting Local and Global Resources." American Educational Research Journal, 54(6),1011–1047. https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831217714321
Easton-Calabria, E. (2016). Refugees asked to fish for themselves’: The Role of Livelihoods Trainings for Kampala’s Urban Refugees. New Issues in Refugee Research, (277). Geneva UNHCR.
Easton-Calabria, E., & Omata, N. (2018). Panacea for the refugee crisis? Rethinking the promotion of ‘self-reliance’for refugees. Third World Quarterly, 39(8), 1458- 1474,https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2018.1458301
Freedman, J. (2016). Sexual and gender-based violence against refugee women: a hidden aspect of the refugee "crisis". Reproductive Health Matters, 24(47), 18-26, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rhm.2016.05.003
Fincham, K. (2020). Higher education and Syrian refugees' navigation of economic, social, and political constraints in exile, Education and Conflict Review, 3. 29-36. https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10109106/
Friedan, B. (2010). The Feminine Mystique. Penguin Classics
García-Holgado, A., & García-Peñalvo, F. J. (2022). A Model for Bridging the Gender Gap in STEM in Higher Education Institutions. In Women in STEM in Higher Education: Good Practices of Attraction, Access, and Retainment in Higher Education (pp. 1-19). Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore.
Giles, W. (2018). "The Borderless Higher Education for Refugees Project: Enabling Refugee and Local Kenyan Students in Dadaab to Transition to University Education". 4 (1), 164-84. https://doi.org/10.17609/wsjc-h122
Grisanti, E. (2019). Higher Education for Displaced Women A defense against human trafficking —IIE PEER Report. https://www.edu-links.org/sites/default/files/media/file/Higher-Ed-for-Displaced-Women-Report_IIE-PEER.pdfAccessed March 2020
Gurer, C. (2019). Refugee perspectives on integration in Germany. American Journal of Qualitative Research, 3(2), 52-70. https://doi.org/10.29333/ajqr/6433
Fincham, K. (2020). Higher education and Syrian refugees' navigation of economic, social and political constraints in exile, Education and Conflict Review, 3. 29-36. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/departments-and-centres/...
Habib, N. (2018). Gender role changes and their impacts on Syrian women refugees in Berlin in light of the Syrian crisis. Discussion Paper, No. SP VI 2018-101, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB), Berlinhttp:// hdl.handle.net/10419/175369
Hakami, A. (2016). " Education is our weapon for the future": Access and non-access to higher education for refugees in Nakivale Refugee Settlement, Uganda (Master's thesis, University of Stavanger, Norway).
Harris, A., Spark, C., & Watts, M. N. C. (2015). Gains and losses: African Australian women and higher education. Journal of Sociology, 51 (2) 370-384. https://doi.org/10.1177/1440783314536792
Hatoss, A., & Huijser, H. (2010). Gendered barriers to educational opportunities: resettlement of Sudanese refugees in Australia. Gender and Education, 22(2), 147-160,https://doi.org/10.1080/09540250903560497
Hovil, L. (2018). Uganda's refugee policies: The history, the politics, the way forward (Rights in Exile Policy Paper). International Refugee Rights Initiative, Retrieved from https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/IRRI-Uganda-policy-paper-October-2018-Paper.pdf
Jack, O., Chase, E., & Warwick, I. (2019). Higher education as a space for promoting the psychosocial well-being of refugee students. Health Education Journal, 78(1), 51-66.
James-Hawkins, L., Qutteina, Y., & Yount, K. M. (2017). The patriarchal bargain in a context of rapid changes to normative gender roles: Young Arab women's role conflict in Qatar. Sex roles, 77(3-4), 155-168. https://doi.org/10.1177/0017896918792588
Krafft, C., Ragui, A., & Pastoor, I. (2021). How do gender norms shape education and domestic work outcomes? The case of Syrian refugee adolescents in Jordan. World bank policy research paper No.9820.
Krause, U. & Schmidt, H. (2019). Refugees as Actors? Critical Reflections on Global Refugee Policies on Self-reliance and Resilience. Journal of Refugee Studies.Vol. 33, No. 1. Oxford University Press. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jrs/article- abstract/33/1/22/5607339 by guest on 31 July 2020.
Lambrechts, A. A. (2020). The super-disadvantaged in higher education: barriers to access for refugee background students in England, Higher Education (2020) 80:803–822 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-020-00515-4
Liebig, T., & K. Tronstad (2018). “Triple Disadvantage? A first overview of the integration of refugee women”, OECD Social, Employment and Migration, Working Papers, No. 216, OECD Publishing, Paris. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/3f3a9612-en
Mavhandu-Mudzusi, A. H. (2019). Are “Blessers” a refuge for refugee girls in Tshwane, the capital city of South Africa? A phenomenographic study. Journal of International Women's Studies, 20(2), 257-270. https://vc.bridgew.edu/jiws/vol20/iss2/18
Maringe F., Ojo, E., & Chiramba, O. (2017), Traumatized Home and Away: Toward a Framework for Interrogating Policy–Practice Disjunctures for Refugee Students in Higher Education. European Education, 49 (4) 210–230, Copyright #Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1056-4934 print/1944-7086 online https://doi.org/10.1080/10564934.2017.1352450
Morrice, L. (2021). The promise of refugee lifelong education: A critical review of the field. Int Rev Educ 67, 851–869 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11159-021-09927-5
Naylor, R., Terry, L., Nguyen, N., & Mifsud, N. (2019). Structural Inequality in Refugee Participation in Higher Education, Journal of Refugee Studies, 0 (0), Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fez077/5571691
Omata, N. (2022). Humanitarian Assistance as Performance? Expectations and Mismatches Between Aid Agencies and Refugee Beneficiaries, Ethnos. https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2022.2154819
Platzer, M. (2018). Refugee Access to Tertiary Education. In: Kury, H., Redo, S. (eds) Refugees and Migrants in Law and Policy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72159-0_8
Phoenix, A., & Pattynama, P. (2006). Intersectionality. European Journal of Women's Studies, 13(3), 187-192. https:// doi.org/10.1177/1350506806065751
Ramsay, J., & Baker, S. (2019). Higher Education and Students from Refugee Backgrounds: A Meta-Scoping Study Georgina. Refugee Survey Quarterly, 38(1), 55-82. https://doi.org/10.1093/rsq/hdy018
Streitwieser, B., Duffy Jaeger, K., & Roche, J. (2020). Included yet excluded: The higher education paradox for resettled refugees in the USA. Higher Education Policy, 33, 203-221. https://doi.org /10.1057/s41307-020-00183-0
The A/RES/71/1 New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants 19 September 2016.
Tong, R. (2018). Feminist thoughts, student economy edition: a more comprehensive introduction. Routledge. https://lccn.loc.gov/2016058505
UNHCR (2022a). Global Trends Report: Forced displacement in 2022. https://www.unhcr.org/global-trends-report-2022
UNHCR (2022b). Annual Results Report 2022, Uganda https://reporting.unhcr.org/operational/operations/uganda
UNHCR (2021). UNHCR Tertiary Education Strategy: 15by30 target – achieving 15% enrolment of refugee learners in higher education by 2030. https://www.unhcr.org/afr/tertiaryeducation.html.
UNFPA (2021). Fact Sheet on Teenage Preganacy. UNFPA, Uganda. https://uganda.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/pub-pdf/teenpregnancy_factsheet_3.pdf
Uganda Ministry of Education and Sports [MoES] (2017). Education and Sports Sector Strategic Plan 2017/18 – 2019/20. Kampala, Uganda.
Copyright (c) 2024 Loyce Allen Asire
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
