Displaced women and girls face their own complex set of gender-specific burdens in refugee camps. As well as the increased threat of sexual violence, safety concerns, and menstrual challenges — there are unique struggles in camp that are largely faced only by women and girls. Many of these women are forced to seek asylum in the hope of a better life with more freedom and independence. Yet, for women in refugee camps, systemic barriers continue to undermine their autonomy and threaten their rights — such as a lack of female interpreters for official appointments, childcare challenges, and domestic burdens, like laundry.
Let us briefly consider the gender-specific reasons some women have faced in their home countries, that lead them to seek asylum. Many women and girls currently housed at the refugee camp on Lesvos are from Afghanistan — which has been under Taliban rule since the withdrawal of US troops in August 2021. Since then, the Taliban have imposed strict restrictions on women’s rights, curtailing and reversing any liberal or democratic progress that had been made over the last decade. Girls were banned from attending secondary school in March 2022, and suspended from universities later that year. Women must cover themselves head to toe in public, be accompanied by a male relative when travelling, and many have been banned from working in public roles — part of a larger, systematic push to police women’s bodies and strip back women’s rights. In fact, under Taliban rule, women’s very voices are banned — they cannot be heard singing or reading aloud, even from their homes.
Further, in Somalia, 99.2% of Somali women and girls aged 15-49 have experienced female genital mutilation(FGM), only 23% of women have paid jobs, and only 25% of girls attend primary school (Concern, 2023). Despite passing the Sexual Offenses Bill in 2018, Somalia struggles to adequately support women and girls; neither the law nor government policies sufficiently protect from gender-based violence (GBV) and discrimination, as the UNFPA reports that 45% of GBV incidents in Somalia occur inside their very homes.
For the women that have fled these countries, and many others, they leave in the hopes of a better, safer, kinder, and more just life. One where they have the right to an education, to work, and to be free. However, more often than not, whilst on a Greek island waiting for their asylum application to be processed, this remains far harder than they hoped.
One key, often-overlooked struggle for women in refugee camps is a lack of female translators for official appointments. For some women seeking asylum, attending their vulnerability assessment or asylum interviews with a male interpreter can mean that they may struggle to disclose sensitive information about their experiences — such as gender-based violence, FGM, or rape — that is critical to their asylum claim. This can often mean women are more likely to hide or not mention critical information that supports their asylum claim, or they will have to uncomfortably (sometimes, traumatically) divulge sexual trauma and private concerns to male interpreters/male interviewers. The right information at these important appointments is often critical to their asylum application — without proper disclosure, asylum seekers risk a failed asylum application, an appeal, and a longer stay in camp. In this way, recruiting and training female interpreters is not only essential for women’s asylum claims, but also for their psychological and emotional wellbeing at these important assessments and interviews. It can be deeply traumatic to relive these experiences during the asylum process, especially to a male interpreter. In this way, recruiting and training female interpreters is not only critical for women’s asylum claims, but also for their psychological and emotional wellbeing at these important assessments and interviews. It can be deeply traumatic to relive these experiences during the asylum process, especially to a male interpreter.
Women in the camp can struggle to work as interpreters for a number of structural reasons, including childcare responsibilities and domestic burdens (cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc). Thus in order to encourage women to work – and thereby increase the number of female interpreters – there must be stronger support and empowerment projects for the female population in the camp, to encourage women to work. For example, A Drop in the Ocean’s Community Empowerment and Mobilisation Programme seeks to create a sense of community for volunteers in the camp. For women forced to flee their home countries, we aim to foster a safe space where they can take ownership, development their work skills, and improve social and cultural integration. Indeed, there is plenty of research that emphasises the importance of community engagement and ownership in humanitarian programme planning. Drop relies on Community Volunteers to provide essential language support through translation and interpretation. “We’d be lost without our Community Volunteers, completely” members of the team on Lesvos say. “It’s way harder to communicate without the CVs— plus we learn so much from them, definitely more than they do from us.”
Maryam*, one of Drop’s newest female Community Volunteers from Somalia, speaks of the childcare burden and the physical burden of labour as key barriers to entry for female interpreters and volunteers, emphasising that some women do want to work, but can’t. Currently, there are only a few and very sporadic childcare options available in camp, which means that women can struggle even getting to their interviews or appointments because of this childcare burden, which often falls on them alone. This means that women and single parents can struggle to volunteer — some have to attend medical appointments, important meetings, or indeed asylum interviews with their children. “As a mother, I can’t work or attend language classes in the city because I must take care of my young daughter,” says Deniz, from Afghanistan. Like Deniz, women who might otherwise work or volunteer as community volunteers or interpreters are often unable to do so because they are solely responsible for looking after their children. This is worsened further for single mothers arriving on the island. Without cash assistance from Greece — which has been frozen since May 2024 — women can struggle to find jobs or voluntary work that gives them independence and a path to financial freedom. This can force them to make risky, unsafe choices in order to earn money to survive.
As well as the burden of childcare — other domestic duties, including laundry tends to fall on the shoulders of women. The Overseas Development Institute released a study which found that women globally on average do ‘over three times more unpaid work than men — including childcare and domestic chores’, including women who do paid work too, demonstrating this inequality for the refugee population, but also for women worldwide. Alleviating the laundry burden is exactly where A Drop in the Ocean comes in; through our Humanitarian Aid programme, we help women and single parents by lowering the domestic burden with our electric washing machine service. This lessens the stress of washing and drying clothes from women in the camp, and allows them to focus on other, more important things, whilst maintaining cleanliness and dignity. When asked “what would you do with your time if you could spend less time laundering?”, most of the respondents to Drop’s survey said, “other household chores”, “rest” and “caring for children”, emphasising the domestic burden faced by women on the move (A Drop in the Ocean, 2024). Refugee Support Aegean further highlights the importance of maintaining dignity through clean clothing: ‘the one thing I have today, left from Afghanistan, is one green blouse. I keep it because it is the only item I have originating from the soil of my home.’ (RSA, 2025). When we wash a load of laundry, we take a small burden off these hands. Each physical load of laundry that is cleaned, dried, and safely returned, represents a mental load lifted.
Under Taliban rule in Afghanistan, women’s voices—both literal and figurative—have been silenced. They have effectively been stripped from public participation. In Somalia, many women suffer gender-based violence, are forced into child marriages and have been denied access to education or the workplace. Now, in the refugee camp on Lesvos, many women face continued gender based challenges: being unable to fully advocate for themselves in the asylum process because there are too few female interpreters to help them safely share their stories. Many women have inadequate childcare provisions in order to work, or volunteer, and far too many women are weighed down with domestic burdens of camp life: cooking, cleaning, and laundry — the hidden load.
This International Women’s Day, we think of the thousands of women living in refugee camps in Greece, who have risked everything in the hope of a better life. We at Drop continue our humanitarian aid programme, our Community Volunteer programme, and our language classes, as we actively work to empower and support women and girls on the move.
*name changed for privacy