The potential for skills development programmes to empower poverty-affected and refugee women in rural Jordan

ABSTRACT

This paper considers the experience of local and Syrian refugee women enrolled on a skills development programme in rural Jordan from a capability perspective. It explores the value of the capability approach as an evaluative framework: one which opposes the dominant econometric lens traditionally used to evaluate skills development interventions. In doing so, it advocates the use of this approach for providing a holistic view of the outcomes of skills development programmes for women, who, in Jordan – as elsewhere in the Global South – are often prevented from participating in the formal labour market, but who may nevertheless stand to gain from skills development interventions. This paper argues that the selected skills development programme in north Jordan contributed significantly to the wellbeing and personal development of the women enrolled. However, it finds that the programme was largely unable to overcome the many barriers to local and Syrian refugee women finding fulfiling employment, as many of them wished to do. It argues that this is indicative of wider socioeconomic challenges in the region which it would be unreasonable to expect a skills development programme to offset and which should not negate the other human development outcomes of the programmes.

KEYWORDS:

• Skills development
• women’s empowerment
• refugees
• skills
• capabilities

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Programme staff do not frame their aims and objectives in capability approach language.

2. For the sake of confidentiality, all the staff and students interviewed have been given pseudonyms.