Women´s Opportunities for Work and Education

The participating countries recognized shared common challenges that low-skilled migrant women face in accessing education and the labor market. Low-skilled migrant women are more often outside of the workforce or in precarious jobs compared to migrant men and host country nationals. In all project countries, the participation of low-skilled migrant women in education and working life is low, leading to social exclusion. The key obstacles the low-skilled migran women face include low language skills, lower levels of formal education and work experience, insufficient skills recognition and profiling processes, and structural barriers like cultural background and gender. These factors result in limited participation in everyday life beyond family, difficulties in combining work and family life, and a lack of social networks. The WOW-e project aimed to tackle these key obstacles faced by low-skilled migrant women in participating countries to accelerate their pathways in education and employment. The WOW-e project developed a comprehensive Framework for an Employment and Education Path for Migrant Women, including practical tools, experiences, and solutions.

The overall aim of the WOW-E project was to increase low-skilled migrant women’s capabilities and opportunities to access education and the labor market. The objective was to assess and recognize the skills of low-skilled migrant women (especially non-formal and informal skills), provide gender and culturally sensitive career counseling, and offer capacity building. The project aimed to harness these skills in women’s upskilling pathways towards education and work life. While tackling the challenges migrant women face in labor integration, the objective was also to promote an inclusive labor market environment. The WOW-E project addressed the attitudes and existing employment and recruitment practices of employers. In close collaboration with employers, it developed new and innovative solutions, methods, and practices to introduce and integrate low-skilled migrant women into the workforce.

The objective was to assess and recognize the skills of low-skilled migrant women (especially non-formal and informal skills), provide gender and culturally sensitive career counseling, and offer capacity building. The project aimed to harness these skills in women’s upskilling pathways towards education and work life. The aim of employer engagement and collaboration was to create a more inclusive labor market and working environment to support the integration and increased opportunities for low-skilled migrant women in the labor market. To reach the project objectives, the project's main activities were: 1. Development of a skills assessment and profiling model, including tools and methods suitable for informal and non-formal skills. 2. Development of a gender and culturally sensitive career counseling model. 3. Development of needs-based capacity-building activities to increase women’s work-related acquirements and skills. 4. Development of a model that includes solutions, tools, and methods to engage employers and increase their capacities to be more equipped to integrate and recruit migrant women. The project’s development work was continuous but followed a two-phase structure. In the first phase, data was collected, and employers’ questionnaires were conducted, along with several mappings of existing tools, methods, and solutions related to the project’s objectives. The first pilot was conducted with low-skilled migrant women and employers. Based on the pilot findings, the second phase continued with the re-development of the models and capacity-building activities. The second pilot targeting low-skilled migrant women and employers was implemented, and the findings contributed to the finalization of the project’s objectives and deliverables. The pilots were implemented by each participating organization. The last activity of the project was to combine the experiences, deliverables, and findings into a comprehensive WOW-e Framework for an Education and Employment Path for Migrant Women. Meetings, workshops, and events were organized to strengthen the project’s dissemination and engagement of stakeholders and participants. These activities were coordinated with the development work of the project deliverables.

The project's final result is a transnational WOW-e Framework for an Education and Employment Path for Migrant Women. The objective of the Framework is to enhance low-skilled migrant women’s access to education and work life through skills assessment and profiling, career counseling, and capacity building. Furthermore, the Framework engages employers and enhances their ability to create a more inclusive labor market and workplace, and to support the integration of and increased opportunities for low-skilled migrant women. The Framework includes summaries of models, experiences, insights, and best practices from WOW-e’s pilots, in which 1) skills assessment and profiling adapted to the needs of low-skilled migrant women, 2) culture and gender-sensitive career counseling fostering women’s aspirations toward education and employment, 3) needs-based capacity workshops, and 4) innovative and practical solutions for employers to promote migrant women’s access to working life were tested and developed. The WOW-e Framework for an Education and Employment Path for Migrant Women compiles all the above and the related tools, and provides simple-to-use guidelines for WOW-e materials available on the project’s platform https://wow-e-platform.circle.so/. The WOW-e platform serves as a repository of relevant materials and tools for counselors, job seekers, and employers, and the tools were tested in the WOW-e project. The tools are collected from the WOW-e partner countries and they include country-specific tools and tools that are transferrable to different contexts. The tools include also tools developed by the WOW-e project: the employers’ needs assessment questionnaire, Career Counseling Handbook, and videos for employers to increase their knowledge and motivation to create more diverse working environments and integrate migrant women into the workforce. The materials are available in Finnish, French, Portuguese, Icelandic, and German. The materials produced in the WOW-e project are also available in English. Outcomes of the project include clearer career paths, empowerment, and increased self-esteem of migrant women, and more diverse working environments. In the long term, these outcomes will lead to increased employment rates and promote the social and economic inclusion of migrant women. Overall, the WOW-e project has increased awareness of low-skilled migrant women’s labor integration needs and challenges that need to be addressed to succeed in efforts to promote low-skilled migrant women’s pathways toward education and working life.