Female labour market participation in Jordan is among the lowest worldwide (16% among Jordanians and 7% among Syrian refugees in 2018). This has barely changed despite the government’s considerable efforts in recent years to integrate local as well as displaced Syrian women into the labour market and foster their self-reliance, in a context marked by protracted displacement and a deep economic crisis that is now further exacerbated by COVID-19 related lockdowns. Understanding of the drivers behind the low effectiveness of these efforts is key for informed policy making and thus improving outcomes of refugee and local women. Stakeholders and analysts1have identified variety of potential obstacles to female labour market participation, however, the relevance of different factors for particular groups of women, specifically local vs displaced women, has not been systematically analyzed so far. While efforts to change policies on the national level currently are under way, changes on the ground are still often wanting, and require more analysis as to the practical obstacles to female labour market participation. In line with research to date from across disciplines, including Dr Lenner’s own work,2our hypothesis is that lack of forms of affordable and appropriate childcare, transportation, personal safety and wage discrimination are among the most pertinent practical obstacles to female employment. This pump priming project seeks to understand these practical obstacles to female labour market activity from the point of view of employers as well as Syrian and Jordanian job-seeking women, and subsequently design a field experiment which will allow us to identify causal effects of a scheme addressing one of the above discussed obstacles. The type of scheme will depend on research findings, but we envisage rolling out either a childcare or transportation scheme with selected employer(s).We aim to secure further funding to implement the intervention and evaluate its effectiveness in attracting and retaining women in employment. This will not only provide robust and reliable evidence for policy-making; it will also constitute a significant contribution to the (forced) migration as well as broader economic development literature, where field experiments are of growing importance but to the best of our knowledge only a few have focused on low labour market participation of females and none have done do so in a context of displacement.

Outcomes:

The multidisciplinary approach will enable creative and novel responses and impact, through a merger of diverse analytical approaches and engagement with international partners and strategically relevant stakeholders in Jordan. The proposed activities will lead to new opportunities, through proposed exploratory work and further funding applications. The resultant strong research and policy network and vast research agenda will enable the University of Bath to lead on future topical calls across areas and disciplines.