Fafo and gender studies

A key to Fafo’s work on gender is the mainstreaming of gender issues in social analysis. All projects have as an explicit aim to include gender as a variable in the analysis, in line with a general holistic perspective on living conditions. Nevertheless, some topics have been singled out as of particular importance.

Women and education
A continuing interest in Fafo’s studies has been education for women. Through its various studies in the Middle East, Fafo has documented the recent rapid increase in female literacy and education, but also the fact that returns to education are different for men and women. An example of this work is cooperation between Fafo and CREDIF in Tunisia on a survey that focuses specifically on reasons why girls drop out of school.

Women in the labour force
The labour force participation of women has been a particular concern for Fafo. The topic raises crucial issues of measurement, since women’s participation often is underreported. It also raises complex issues of modelling and substantive analysis. The Eritrean Household Income and expenditure survey, which the National Statistical Office carried out with technical assistance from Fafo, was designed to capture women’s work. Our analysis of women’s labour force participation and employment in Eritrea shows the fruitfulness of this approach, because the data allows detailed analysis of the various choices open to women.

In China, the migration and labour mobility survey carried out together with the National Center for Research and Technology Development in three large cities, shed light on the situation of female migrants as one particular part of the labour force.

Female headed household
The “Female headed household” is an elusive concept, but it is a fact that in many societies women are the sole breadwinner for many households. Therefore it has by necessity become a focus for our studies, particularly in Eritrea, where female headed households make up 44 percent of the households.

Gender and migration
Another focal point in Fafo’s research on gender is the issue of gender and migration. Women now constitute half the world’s migrants, and as men and women migrate for different reasons, through different channels and with different outcomes, it is necessary to critically examine gender issues in ‘sending societies’ and in states’ migration regimes. Currently, Fafo is carrying out several projects which focus on men and women’s reasons to migrate and available means to achieve mobility, with a special emphasis on how decisions to migrate and access to achieve migration is linked to gender, as well as ethnicity and class.

Social networks and coping strategies
A characteristic of much of Fafo’s living conditions research is to go beyond a focus on isolated households. Rather, importance is put on how households and individuals are integrated into social networks, and how household based coping strategies exist within such networks.

Participation in politics and public life
The living conditions surveys usually contain a module on participation in politics and public life. The module is used for both female and male respondents, but is often slightly different. The Middle Eastern surveys have also focused specifically on concerns that women face in access to public space. In recent years, a heightened awareness surrounding women’s migration has highlighted the need for knowledge on how women’s participation in politics and public life influence the propensity to migrate and the available channels to migrate through. Fafo has in several projects analyzed the relationship between gender inequality and women’s out-migration.

Violence against women
Fafo includes a module on domestic violence in some of its surveys. The module aims at ascertaining both the social attitudes to violence and the frequency of such violence. The questionnaire has been tested in Lebanon and Jordan. The issue of violence against women is also important in Fafo’s qualitative work, and researchers at Fafo have studied exploitation of women in migration and prostitution.

Maternal mortality and maternal health
Most of Fafo’s living conditions surveys focus on maternal health, and in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Lebanon and Syria maternal mortality is also covered.