“A woman endures; she can do everything” The empowerment of Jordanian and Syrian women in the IKEA and Jordan River Foundation social entrepreneurship initiative

Abstract: Within Jordan, several aspects are hindering women from accessing the labor market, such as the lack of a law prohibiting gender-based discrimination on the work place. Importantly, with the recent influx of Syrian refugees to Jordan, increased pressure has been put on the labor market. In order to ameliorate the lives of women in Jordan, IKEA of Sweden has in cooperation with Jordan River Foundation launched an initiative where both Jordanian women and Syrian refugee women participate. The thesis aims to understand what motivates women to participate and how participation has affected empowerment amongst the women. In order to achieve this understanding, field work was conducted in Jordan, where semi-structured interviews were done. In total, 19 women participated, making this thesis of a qualitative kind. An analytical framework was adopted based on a previous study by Al-Dajani and Marlow (2013) and was used to view different themes in the data. The conclusion of this thesis indicates quite pragmatic reasons for the women to engage in the initiative and that participation has to a large extent had a positive impact on the empowerment amongst the women. Importantly, few differences are identified amongst both groups of women.