HER Project Team gathered for the midterm meeting. Our agenda included reviewing the progress of the project activities, administrations challenges, and research about women’s employment/entrepreneurship in our countries.
The activities carried out so far correspond to the planning phase and the beginning of the implementation phase, with the carrying out of the first long-term staff mobility. The development of an educational path for migrant women is being created by the activities executed, focusing on the research of the current situation of the target group in the labour market to optimise the implementation of the educational activities and increase the entrepreneur spirit of the migrant mothers, to find the best tools and methods to achieve our objectives.
The project team validated achievements of the project at this current stage are:
– Deeper knowledge of the current situation of migrant mothers regarding their employment.
– Creation of a cooperation network among associations that works towards the social inclusion of the target, both between the consortium at the international level and with local and regional organizations.
– Acquisition of new skills and competencies, as well as experience, methods and good practices by the staff of the partner organizations in order to improve the capacities to implement successfully adult education activities to contrast marginalization and social exclusion.
Some facts about the research we presented are
- Turkey is hosting the world’s largest refugee population since 2014.
- The top three countries of origin are Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
- There are 3.7 million Syrians under temporary protection and over 330,000 refugees and asylum seekers under international protection.
We focus on especially Syrian refugees in this project. The reason for identifying Syrian refugees for the project participants is related to the being the most crowded group in these refugee populations in Turkey.
Considering the education participation statistics of Syrian women living in Turkey;
- 19% of these women have never been to school
- 47% have completed primary school,
- 20% have completed secondary school.
Main demographic variables for employment of Syrian women in Turkey?
- Age: The percentage of occupation rate of Syrian migrant women increases with age, reaching the highest value at 12% in the 35-39 and 40-44 age groups, and decreases to 5% in the 45-49 age group.
- Marital Status: The rate of occupation among Syrian migrant women who have never been married or divorced, separated or widowed is higher than those who are currently married (%6).
- Number of Children: The occupation percentage of Syrian migrant women who have no children is the highest among all Syrian women.
Sectors of the Syrian women are working in Turkey?
- The women mostly work in NGOs or public institutions, their own businesses, work outside the home in paid jobs such as hairdressers, clerks, and garment workers, do piecework at home