Negotiating the COVID-19 (C19) pandemic in a complex and hostile asylum system is challenging and stressful for anyone who has sought protection in the UK. For asylum-seeking and refugee women gender and gendered experiences can create additional stratifications of need, particularly alongside other factors including ethnicity, language skills, caring duties, poor physical or mental health, disability, gender identity, sexual and gender orientation. Traditional gender roles can become further entrenched in lockdown. In domestic situations where women have less power in decision making, their needs may go unmet. As a result, women are more likely to face barriers to services and social justice, experience gender-based violence, extreme poverty, hunger and exploitation. In order to mitigate unnecessary harm, it is essential that mainstream organisations understand and recognise gender inequalities (alongside other intersecting characteristics) in the refugee experience and take proactive steps to ensure they are not exacerbated during or as a result of the C19 pandemic.
This guidance, by Refugee Women Connect, has been designed for frontline refugee sector organisations continuing to support asylum-seeking and refugee women during C19. It has been produced in response to a need articulated across the sector for direction in adapting services in a way that mitigates gendered harm. It is being produced now, based on a number of key pieces of research on the impact of C19 in asylum-seeking and refugee communities that have been recently published. As lockdown eases, services must continue to be adapted and evaluated through a lens of gendered needs.
