For some Syrian women living in Lebanon, the bitter realities of life as a refugee have nourished an unexpected side effect: empowerment. Difficult economic and legal circumstances have pushed women to take on more responsibilities within their families, including many that were once a man’s domain. Uprooted from some familiar social constraints and exposed to programs promoting women’s rights through contact with aid groups, some of them have obtained a degree of personal autonomy they never experienced in Syria.
More than a million Syrian refugees live in Lebanon, seeking refuge from a war that has raged for more than four years. Amid fears that the influx would overwhelm the fragile country, in 2014 the government began requiring visas for arriving Syrians. Last year, it introduced stringent residency requirements that made obtaining legal status impossible for many of them. That has sharply restricted mobility — and the ability to work — for men, who are more at risk of arrest for undocumented status than women.
As a result, the women now shoulder much of the burden of taking care of the family. It is an enormous shift for those who in Syria never left their houses without a male relative.
“Many of these women come from conservative societies where men do everything and women stay at home,” said Nibal Al Alow, senior social counselor at Basmeh and Zeitooneh, an organization founded by Syrian expatriates that works with Syrian refugees in Lebanon. “Now they have to register the children in school, buy the food, take children to the doctor and take care of everything. Women have taken on larger roles.”
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