<mark>over 49,000 refugees currently have active work permits, while the total number of permits being issued</mark> and renewed since early 2016 stands at over 100,000 allowing refugees to look for jobs.<sup>11</sup> <mark>Female labor force participation is extremely low in both Jordan and Syria. Before the conflict, in 2010, the female labor force participation was 15.4 percent in Jordan and 13.3 percent in Syria compared to 67.6 percent and 72.7 percent for males, respectively. Employment rates in Jordan were 11.9 percent for women and 60.7 percent for men, compared to 10 percent and 68.5 percent for Syrian women and men, respectively. Unemployment rates in both countries were similar for women, at around 23 percent, but not for men as male unemployment rates were 5.8 percent in Syria compared to 10.3 percent in Jordan.</mark><sup>12</sup> <mark>Agriculture was a more important source of employment in Syria than in Jordan, accounting for 15.2 percent of employment in 2009 compared with 3 percent in Jordan, and the industrial sector had a smaller employment share in Syria compared to Jordan (Verme et al. 2016). In Syria, women living in rural areas are likely to have been working on family farms and in the agricultural sector, doing part‐time seasonal jobs or as unpaid family workers.</mark><sup>13</sup> <mark>According to estimations, approximately 70 percent of all agricultural work is performed by women. Women carry the obligation of physically planting seeds, weeding, threshing, harvesting, processing, and so on. Women and children are singularly responsible for fruits and</mark> vegetable production, poultry, and livestock (Verner 2017).

<mark>Gender‐based norms about female labor market participation, in addition to the lack of work permits outside camps, are another challenge for female refugees wanting to find a job and integrate into the Jordanian labor market. Results of focus group discussions indicate that both men and women in Jordan resist the idea of women working. While many women highlighted the role of women in the workforce, others said that the idea of women’s work clashed with traditional values. Men, on the other hand, justified their resistance to women’s labor force participation by stating that job opportunities were scarce, salaries were low, and they were treated poorly (European Regional Development and Protection Programme, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and World Bank, 2016). Gender‐based violence may be another barrier to women’s labor market participation by limiting their mobility outside the home. Small scale needs assessments of Syrian refugee</mark><sup>14</sup> <mark>show high levels of sexual and gender‐based violence including rape, assault, harassment, and intimate partner violence (Masterson, 2014, Samari,</mark> 2017).

<mark>At the time that the data were gathered for our research, access to employment was limited. At the end of 2015, only 5,700 Syrian refugees were working legally in Jordan. A much larger number worked in the informal sector; estimates range from 42,000 to 150,000 (World Bank 2016). It is estimated that unemployment among the Syrian refugee community stood at 60 percent (ILO 2017). Hence, lack of</mark>

> 11 <u>https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/64114.pdf, accessed August 2,2018.</u>

> 12 Data from International Labour Organization (ILO) 2016.

> 13 Studies of the agricultural sector in the late 1990s show that poorer women are traditionally responsible for crop and livestock production. Forty‐five per cent of farm family labor is provided by unpaid females (100% for the care of animals) (IFAD 2001) and more recent research shows that women’s responsibility for agricultural production has increased since ( Galièa, Jiggins, and Struika, 2013).

> 14 In Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey.

9