This article investigates the determinants of women empowerment among refugee women living in Nairobi, Kenya. Kenya is the fifth-largest asylum country in Africa, hosting approximately 550,817 refugees as of April 2022. Nearly half of these refugees reside in the Dadaab refugee camp, 41 percent in the Kakuma refugee camp, and 16 percent in urban areas, primarily Nairobi.
The study utilized cross-sectional data from the 2021 Refugee and Host Household Survey (RHHS) conducted in Nairobi, Kenya. The survey sampled a total of 4,853 households, including 2,420 refugee households. Women aged 15 to 49 years were randomly selected from each household to participate in the women empowerment section of the questionnaire. Out of the 1,579 refugee women randomly sampled, 1,532 consented to participate, resulting in a response rate of 97 percent.
Empowerment is considered in terms of agency over personal health, participation in labor, access to and control of contraception, involvement in domestic household decision-making, access to information, knowledge of HIV prevention and transmission, and attitudes towards gender-based violence and early marriages. The authors construct an index of women’s empowerment incorporating data in five equally weighted domains: (1) attitudes towards socio-cultural norms (including “wife-beating”); (2) access to human and social resources; (3) decision-making over general household decisions; (4) decision-making over sexual and reproductive health and rights; and (5) economic empowerment. A fractional logit regression model to identify the determinants of women’s empowerment.
Main results:
- 6 percent of the refugee women respondents living in Nairobi are empowered at 80 percent of total weighted indicators, compared to 22 percent of the nationals living in Nairobi.
- The age of the household head, gender of the household head, education level of the refugee woman, employment status of the household head, and education of the household head play significant roles in enabling women empowerment. The results suggest a positive relationship between a refugee woman’s age and her empowerment; for each additional year, empowerment increases by 0.2 percentage points. A female-headed household increases the probability of empowerment by four percentage points. The attainment of a secondary level of education increases the probability of a refugee women’s empowerment by two percentage points relative to refugee women who have no formal education.
- Being single, widowed, separated, or divorced, as well as being Muslim, lowers empowerment. Being in polygamous marriage for refugee women lowers the probability of being empowered by six percentage points compared to refugee women in monogamous marriages. However, the situation is worse off for divorced, separated, or widowed women and single or never married refugee women, whose probability of being empowered decreases by 23 and 22 percentage points respectively compared to refugee women in monogamous marriages. Muslim refugee women have a four-percentage-point-lower probability of being empowered compared to Christian refugee women. The employment status of the household head increases the probability of empowerment by four percentage points when the head is in an employed status compared to when they are not employed.
The study’s findings highlight the impact of individual and household characteristics on the empowerment of refugee women living in Nairobi, Kenya. The authors propose three main policy implications, emphasizing the importance of economic empowerment, sexual and reproductive rights, and education for the autonomy and resilience of refugee women: (1) enhance economic empowerment through refugee-specific platforms that provide access to work permits, credit, and business opportunities; (2) prioritize sexual and reproductive health rights by establishing health clinics and subsidizing services; and (3) emphasize the importance of education by implementing policies that reintegrate refugees into schools, recognize prior learning qualifications, and address educational barriers.