Syrian Women in Turkey Face Intersecting Barriers to Employment

Syrian women in Turkey face heightened barriers to employment that are compounded by gender roles, displacement, language difficulties, legal status, and the prevalence of informal work. Child-care responsibilities and gender norms restrict women’s employment across Turkey, which is by far the top destination for displaced Syrians, and Syrian workers writ large are far more likely to be employed informally and have limited Turkish language proficiency. For displaced Syrian women, these intersecting challenges can narrow access to training and the jobs available afterward.

Recent evidence makes the distinction clear. The 2023 Syrians Barometer survey estimated that 63 percent of Syrian men were in the labor force, compared with 4 percent of Syrian women; women accounted for only 6 percent of working Syrians.1 Of the more than 108,500 work permits issued to Syrians in 2023, fewer than 6,400 went to women.2 A 2024 labor-market assessment also estimated employment rates of about 71 percent for Syrian men and around 10 percent for Syrian women.3

To be sure, Turkish women face substantial barriers of their own. Women’s labor-force participation in Turkey remains low by standards of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD): about 41 percent in Turkey versus 71 percent in the United States and 68 percent across the OECD, as of mid-2026.4 The International Labor Organization (ILO) has found that care responsibilities, limited child-care provision, and traditional gender roles were among the principal constraints.5 Research by the ILO and others has concluded that displacement adds another layer of disadvantage for Syrian women.6 Differences in demographic and educational characteristics also explain part of the employment gap between Turkish and Syrian women.7

Even among those who are employed, a distinction is visible in the quality and formality of work. Survey data published in 2024 found that 87 percent of employed Syrians (men and women alike) were working informally, compared with 21 percent of employed Turkish respondents.8 While Syrian men are far more likely than Syrian women to be employed, their employment does not necessarily offer job security or an effective use of skills. As of 2024, 68 percent of employed Syrian men and 72 percent of employed Syrian women were in daily-wage work.9 Syrian men therefore share much of the precarity associated with employment.

Humanitarian and development organizations have tried to improve access to formal work through vocational, language, entrepreneurship, and work-based learning programs. These initiatives are not all designed exclusively for women: Some target Syrians and vulnerable Turkish citizens, while others include women-specific components or incentives. Their results therefore need to be judged with that distinction in mind. The central question is not whether training has value, but whether it can translate into durable employment for women whose choices are constrained by care work, language, informality, and the structure of local labor markets.

That question has acquired new urgency since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government in late 2024 and the subsequent return of Syrians from Turkey. Approximately 2.2 million Syrians held temporary protection in Turkey as of September 2026, down from more than 3.7 million in 2021, with women and girls accounting for slightly under half of the remaining population10 (Syrians are not eligible for legal refugee status in Turkey). As the Syrian population has declined, employers and others have begun discussing the consequences of a smaller workforce. In June 2026, the government eased work-permit requirements for people under temporary protection and removed the quota limiting the share of such workers an employer could hire.11 These changes addressed one formal barrier, but they do not by themselves resolve the conditions that have kept many Syrian women outside stable employment.

This article examines those overlapping barriers and the extent to which livelihood programs can address them. It draws on the author’s interviews with Syrian women who participated in vocational training as well published research on refugee employment and women’s labor-market participation in Turkey.

Paper Certifications versus On-the-Ground Realities

Syrian women tend to have relatively low levels of educational attainment, which can narrow the range of jobs immediately available to them.12 Training can address this challenge by filling specific skills gaps, but its usefulness depends on whether the skill is sought by employers, whether the participant can enter the formal labor market, and whether the course resembles workplace conditions. Programs vary considerably: Some combine language instruction, vocational skills, work-based learning, job placement, and/or entrepreneurship support, while others have concentrated on activities traditionally associated with women, including sewing, handicrafts, food production, and soap making.

The distinction between a course certificate and a formal occupational qualification is also important. In the programs described by women interviewed for this article, certificates primarily documented completion of a course. They were not licenses to sew, cook, or make soap, nor did they guarantee formal employment. Their value depended on whether employers recognized the training and whether the participant could demonstrate the speed, experience, and other skills required in a workplace.

In an Istanbul district where textile workshops dominate the local economy, women who had completed sewing and garment-production courses told the author that the training had done little to improve their employment prospects. Several said the pace and methods used in class differed from production environments, where workers were expected to produce quickly and at low cost. While the courses might not have been meaningless, completion did not remove the stiff employer demands, complicated hiring practices, and low wages available to them.

Consider the experience of M.A., a 34-year-old Syrian woman who completed a soap-making course through a nongovernmental organization (NGO) serving displaced Syrians in Bursa in 2024. Her frustration was not that the course failed to produce an activity. The women made products and displayed them at a local fair. The problem was what happened after the project ended:

We spent a lot of time learning to make soap, but now I can’t find a place where I can use those skills, and I don’t have enough money to start a business of my own. The project ended, the soaps were displayed at local fairs, but most of them never sold. After all that effort, seeing everything reduced to a one-week fair was disappointing. None of the women I took the course with are working in this field today.

Her account points to the difference between completing an activity and securing a livelihood. Fairs, exhibitions, certificates, and participation figures are visible outputs and can be counted at the end of a project. Sustained employment is harder to produce because it depends on demand, capital, care arrangements, language, legal access, and employers. Monitoring systems can measure longer-term outcomes, but it is unclear whether those outcomes are consistently tracked and then used to change program design.

The experience of Z.E., a 28-year-old Syrian woman in Kızıltepe, Mardin, who completed a cooking course, illustrates a different but related problem. She hoped to establish a small catering business, but legal operation required permits, inspections, tax obligations, and start-up capital. After using up her savings, she accepted informal work as a dishwasher in a hotel kitchen. The training gave her a skill she wanted to use, but it did not provide the capital or administrative support needed to turn that skill into a viable business.

To be sure, these obstacles are not limited to women. Syrian men also work largely in insecure and informal jobs and rely on daily-wage and manual work.13 However, women have a much lower rate of entry into paid work and face additional constraints once they try to enter it. Informal employment can mean work without social-security registration, predictable hours, paid leave, or reliable enforcement of wages. In that setting, a training certificate cannot substitute for a formal contract, recognized prior experience, or access to an employer willing to hire formally.

The Second Shift and Care Burdens

Care responsibilities are a major barrier to women’s employment in Turkey generally, including for Syrians. Traditional gender roles, insufficient parental leave, and limited early childhood care have been cited as important factors for low female labor-force participation.14 Syrian women encounter the same gendered division of care, often with fewer financial and family resources. The burden may also be particularly acute for Syrian women because their households tend to be larger and feature more children.15

For S.M., a 35-year-old Syrian mother of three in Istanbul, the lack of child care led her to abandon a sewing course despite her initial enthusiasm. She enrolled, she said, “because I wanted to learn a skill and improve our situation.” She explained:

The oldest was at school, but I had nowhere to leave the younger two. They couldn’t stay in the classroom, and honestly I worried they might get hurt if they did. For a while I asked a neighbor for help, but it wasn’t something I could keep doing. After three weeks, I stopped attending.

Her experience shows a practical limit that course design alone cannot always solve. Flexible schedules may make attendance easier, but they do not create child-care arrangements. Women who do manage to attend classes may still return home to cooking, cleaning, and caring for children.

Deeper Exclusion

Employment barriers extend beyond training and care. The ILO has identified discrimination, poor working conditions, and workplace violence and harassment as among the factors shaping women’s access to decent work.16 For Syrian women, gender and the experience of displacement can intersect. This distinction is important: Not every instance of unequal treatment can be attributed to being displaced, but displacement can intensify existing gender inequalities.

Evidence from the 2023 Syrians Barometer survey points to the broader environment in which this occurs. More than one in ten Syrian respondents—men and women alike—identified discrimination as a problem they faced in Turkey, while focus-group discussions raised discrimination and racism more strongly, and nearly one-fifth of respondents cited “working conditions.”17 While these figures do not describe gender-specific issues, they illustrate the existence of discrimination and poor working conditions for Syrians more generally.

Language is another dividing line. Higher Turkish language skills can lead to better employment opportunities, and the ILO has treated language training as part of labor-market integration for Syrians.18 Limited language proficiency can hamper the ability to follow technical instruction, make it harder to understand workplace rules, communicate with employers and customers, use public employment services, complete administrative procedures, or challenge problems at work.

Limited proficiency can also affect one’s ability to attend vocational courses. Even if formally open to Syrian participants, many courses are delivered only in Turkish, making them difficult to access for those unable to follow technical instructions. Some initiatives combine Turkish language training with vocational and work-based components, but where language support is absent or insufficient, vocational instruction can reproduce an entry barrier rather than remove it.

Relationships with employers matter as well. Formal employment often depends on receiving information about vacancies, having one’s experience recognized, being able to offer referrals, and meeting employers who understand the rules governing Syrians’ employment. Programs that include workplace learning, employer engagement, or job placement attempt to build those links. A standalone course has less capacity to do so, particularly for women whose mobility and social networks are already limited.

The Logic of Livelihood Training

Some livelihood programs have evolved as implementing organizations have recognized weaknesses in earlier approaches. An ILO evaluation of a project for Syrian women and host communities in Gaziantep, for instance, warned that training should respond to labor-market demand and that accumulating certificates in narrow fields such as hairdressing could limit employability.19 A separate ILO evaluation recommended a more sector-specific approach to work-based learning, after which implementing partners identified sectors according to provincial labor demand.20

ILO evaluators have also acknowledged gender-specific shortcomings. A cluster evaluation completed in October 2024, for a program focused on decent work for Syrians and Turkish nationals, identified an initial lack of attention to women’s needs; greater attention was subsequently paid to child care and social perceptions of women’s employment.21 ILO recommendations for that program called for sex-disaggregated monitoring, research into barriers to formal employment, targeted incentives to improve women’s participation and retention, and labor-market research and sectoral assessments to identify skills gaps and employment needs. This shows that at least some implementing institutions have recognized the mismatch between training and employment.

From Training to Employment

Evidence from Turkey suggests vocational training is most likely to be successful when it is connected to the conditions under which participants actually seek work. That means identifying local demand at the outset, distinguishing completion certificates from recognized qualifications, linking participants with employers, providing language support where needed, and addressing care responsibilities that can prevent women from attending training or accepting a job.

It also requires highlighting the particular overlapping barriers facing displaced women. While Turkish women face low labor-force participation, unequal care responsibilities, discrimination, and informal work, Syrian men face high levels of informality and insecure employment. Syrian women sit at the intersection of these patterns. They encounter gendered barriers that are common in Turkey while also navigating displacement, language difficulties, and a labor market in which Syrians are disproportionately concentrated in informal work.

Some programs have moved to acknowledge these issues by using labor-market assessments, employer partnerships, work-based learning, language training, and women-specific incentives. The remaining challenge is consistency. A course that responds to an available job, connects a participant with an employer, and makes attendance possible can be useful. A course that ends at certification without a realistic route into employment leaves the larger barriers untouched.

As Turkey adjusts to a declining Syrian population and seeks to formalize the workers who remain, the question is not simply how many people can be trained, but whether they can obtain work that is legal, sustainable, and compatible with the realities of their lives. That requires employment policy and livelihood programming that addresses gender and displacement experience together, rather than assuming that a new skill, by itself, can overcome both.

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