Summary of this article
Refugee women encounter heightened economic and social challenges, often excluded from formal labour markets and burdened with caregiving responsibilities, limiting their public life.
International Women’s Day serves as a reminder of the millions of women affected by war, from mass killings to sexual violence.
Closing employment and wage gaps for refugee women could have a significant global economic impact, with estimates suggesting a potential boost of $1.4 trillion to global GDP annually.
Zulaikha was 17 when she moved with her family from Afghanistan to India in 2019. With no sons in the family and three daughters to take care of, her father decided that leaving their homeland was the safest option and the only way his daughters would have the opportunity to build independent lives.
“I am glad that we moved, because after the Taliban takeover in 2021, women are not allowed to work or study,” she said. Even before the takeover, she recalled frequently hearing about school-going girls being kidnapped, noting that the gender disparity was already stark.
In India, Zulaikha says she feels welcomed, contrasting it with the male-dominated public spaces and offices she remembers in Kabul. Yet she adds that she would return to her country “in a heartbeat” if the situation at home allowed women the freedom they deserve.
“Education and employment are two defining features of a person’s life, you cannot simply take them away from someone because they are a woman,” she said.
Conflicts and wars, regardless of their geopolitical motives, affect some people more severely than others, with gender being one of the most significant factors.
“It is perhaps more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier in an armed conflict,” a retired Dutch general had said. As Israel’s war in Gaza intensified and the fears of famine loomed, Israeli soldiers posted photos and videos of themselves handling lingerie found in Palestinian homes.
In one video, a soldier is seen sitting in an armchair in a Gaza home, smiling with a gun in one hand while dangling white satin underwear over the open mouth of a comrade lying on a sofa. In another, a soldier sits atop a tank holding a female mannequin dressed in a black bra and helmet, joking: “I found a beautiful wife, serious relationship in Gaza, great woman.”
In war zones, women’s agency is further undermined. In societies already constrained for women, conflict only intensifies patriarchal structures—whether it is a war waged in the name of “liberating” women or a situation where women disproportionately bear the brunt of its impact. Gerda Lerner explains that even the model out of which slavery developed as a social institution was provided by the domestic subordination of women, she wrote in The Creation of Patriarchy.
Zulaikha is one of the thousands of Afghan refugees living in India. By the end of 2024, more than 2,40,000 refugees and asylum-seekers had been registered in the country. Nearly half of them, about 46 per cent, are women and girls.
More than 600 million women and girls were living in conflict-affected countries in 2022, marking a 50 per cent increase since 2017. Four years after the Taliban takeover, eight out of ten young Afghan women remain excluded from education, employment or training.
Taliban’s 2026 Criminal codes are such that cruelty to animals attracts harsher punishment than serious violence against women. A husband will face a sentence of only fifteen days’ imprisonment, and only if the woman can prove before a judge that she was beaten with a stick and suffered serious injuries such as “a wound or bodily bruising”.
If a woman repeatedly goes to her father’s house or that of other relatives and does not return despite her husband’s request, she, along with any family member or relative who prevents her return, will be sentenced to three months’ imprisonment.
Research indicates that, beyond national laws, women disproportionately shoulder the consequences of displacement in conflict and war zones, facing increased risks of sexual violence, trafficking, and other forms of exploitation. There has also been an 87 per cent increase in conflict-related sexual violence between 2022 and 2024.
While other affected groups include men, people with diverse sexual orientations and gender identities, racial and ethnic minorities, women and girls account for 92 per cent of victims.
The use of rape as a weapon of war has also been widely documented. Sue Lloyd-Roberts in ‘The War on Women’ wrote about how systematic sexual violence in conflict zones such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo reveal that rape is used as a tactic to terrorise and demoralise communities.
In many contexts, sexual violence is not simply the act of rogue soldiers but a deliberate tactic of warfare. Its costs and consequences endure for generations, reinforcing patriarchal control and instilling fear that keeps communities—and particularly women and girls—from accessing public spaces, including schools.
During the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, between 2,50,000 and 5,00,000 women and girls were raped. At least 2,00,000 cases have been reported in the Democratic Republic of the Congo since 1996, more than 60,000 during the civil war in Sierra Leone, and between 20,000 and 50,000 in the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The number, colossal as they may seem, is mostly an underestimation of the actual numbers of victims, most of whom could never report to authorities. Moreover, these are not the crimes from the past. In the current escalation between Israel and Palestine, UN experts report that they have received “credible allegations” that Palestinian women and girls have been subjected to sexual assault, including rape, while in Israeli detention.
Women face a unique set of challenges even when seeking refuge in other countries. While gender gaps affect women globally, these inequalities are further intensified for refugee women.
In many host countries, legal frameworks either prevent refugees from joining formal labour markets or allow only limited access. These barriers, combined with additional responsibilities such as child-rearing, which disproportionately fall on women, and the lack of social networks in the host country, significantly restrict refugee women’s participation in formal employment and their economic empowerment.
The global economic impact of excluding refugee women from formal work is considerable. According to a 2019 report, closing employment and wage gaps for refugee women could increase global GDP by $1.4 trillion annually.
Afroz*, a mother of three, fled from Afghanistan to India before the Taliban takeover. She now earns a living through stitching work, but struggles to make ends meet for her family.
The income she earns barely covers the rent and electricity bills. For other expenses, including her children’s education and daily needs, the family relies on the earnings of the eldest son.
“I am in no place to complain,”Afroz said.
This International Women’s Day, as a full-scale war rages in West Asia, it is crucial not to forget the haunting images of the mass graves of hundreds of school girls who were killed by an Israeli strike in Iran on the first day of the war. It is a moment to remember Hind Rijab, who was trapped in the wreckage and later died, surrounded by the bodies of her family members, all of whom were killed by Israeli soldiers.
Women have come a long way, from fighting for the right to vote and access to public spaces. Yet, amid debates over the waves of feminism and its definitions, it is often the woman at the margins who bears the greatest suffering—an injustice further amplified by the geopolitical crises surrounding us; and as Martin Luther King Jr. had put it, "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
(*name changed to maintain anyonymity)
