Predictors, Barriers, and Facilitators to Refugee Women’s Employment and Economic Inclusion: A Mixed-Methods Systematic Review

This mixed-method systematic review and meta-analysis offers a comprehensive perspective on the barriers, facilitators, and predictors of refugee women’s employment and economic inclusion. This knowledge-synthesis project has the potential to offer a more complete synthesis of the available evidence from quantitative and qualitative studies through comparison and complementarity between both strands of findings and therefore contribute to the current body of knowledge regarding refugee women’s employment and economic inclusion in their host countries. Because refugee women’s experiences of employment and economic inclusion greatly vary depending on the context and sociopolitical aspects of the host countries, this study sheds new light on the unique challenges that refugee women face with employment and economic inclusion. Also, the study offers a better understanding of the factors that affect refugee women’s employment and economic inclusion to inform future employment models and policy and practice implementation. The review findings draw inferences about the programs/models’ design, features, and implementation contexts that are inclusive, gender specific, and conducive to offer effective refugee women’s employment and entrepreneurship programs/models. The results point toward potential best practice guidelines for employment organizations working with refugee populations. The findings can be translated into a set of practice outcomes and policy recommendations for refugee women’s employment and economic inclusion. They can also promote refugee women’s identities and opportunities in their new host country and refine our understanding of the complex factors shaping refugee women’s employment experiences. In this way we can contribute to the creation of more inclusive, equitable societies.