Beyond Borders and Bias
Migrant Women in the Workforce
The way we view employment has changed in the past decades: from just a means of survival to a path for self-fulfillment. From a feminist perspective, it remains a cornerstone of financial independence and personal autonomy for women.
But while employment is a net benefit for all women, individual women’s experience of employment varies wildly. Women aren’t a monolith. There is no “universal woman” and as such there is also no universal female experience of employment. Depending on life circumstances, access to employment and how this work is valued is still far from equitable. An intersectional approach is crucial to understanding the nuanced challenges faced by diverse groups of women, enabling us to implement meaningful and equitable solutions.
The title of this article might sound rather pessimistic, but it refers to the particular life circumstances that women with a migration background face. Researchers have named it the double jeopardy or the double disadvantage. Put simply, women with a migration background face discrimination and hardships due to each of their identities: both that of a migrant, but also that of a woman. From case to case, there can be additional layers of discrimination that they face: racial, religious, etc., which can have a multiplying effect.
Migrant Women in Austria: Who are They?
One in five women in Austria has a migration background and many of them share similar experiences. According to data from Statistik Austria:
- Most of them are first generation (88,4%). Being first-generation likely means they start from scratch in building a support network and the cultural capital needed to thrive in society
- The are highly educated, with 45,8% holding university degrees or similar1 (compared to 39,2% of non-migrant women). This makes them a highly qualified demographic, adding invaluable new skills and knowledge.
- Many were educated abroad: three in four women born outside Austria completed their highest degree outside Europe. While international education is a prized experience, it can lead to difficulties in having recognized qualifications.
But they also have a lower employment rate than women born in Austria (69% vs 76%) and face a higher risk of unemployment and poverty. While there isn’t any one easy answer to why this is, there are several factors that come into play.
Women versus Goliath: Structural Challenges Migrant Women Face
On the one hand, women with a migration background face the same common challenges as all women: the care-work gap and the gender pay-gap.
Still today, women tend to more often carry the brunt of care work in their households and are more often employed in part-time positions. According to 2024 data from the Austrian Integration Fund every second woman of working age has a part-time position because of child- or elderly-care. This is true both for women with and without migration background, the differences between the two demographics varying just by a couple of percentage points.
Unpaid work creates a chain reaction: fewer working hours lead to lower incomes, reduced job experience, higher career barriers, and, ultimately, less financial security in retirement. While essential, care-work is still not paid work, and this leaves many women without a safety net against financial hardships in life.
Also, in Austria there is still a large gender pay gap. This year, Equal Pay Day in Austria fell on the 1st of November. This means that if the average man in Austria stopped working on that day he will still have earned just as much money as the average woman in Austria. A full 2 months “off”.
While important, the gender pay gap isn’t intersectional. While women in Austria on average work 2 months more than the average man to reach the same income, sub-segments experience an even larger pay gap. In 2024 in Austria a woman with a migration background has to work 90 days more than the average man to reach the same level of income, 31 days more than the average woman here. This difference is even stronger in occupations related to care or service work, where migrant women tend to be overly represented.
The Momentum Institute looked at the data from the 2022 Microcensus in Austria and laid all plainly: migrant women are a crucial part of what keep society afloat in Austria, as they very often work in system-relevant jobs. According to their calculations migrant women:
- Make up Almost half of all kitchen and cleaning staff
- Are every 4 in 10 cashiers
- Represent ⅓ of caregiver and childcare workers
While they do represent a crucial part of the system, their overrepresentation means not just an even deeper pay gap, but a very high risk of poverty. For example, women working in childcare earn 118 € below the poverty line, cleaning and support staff 330 € below the poverty line, waste disposal workers a harrowing 394 € below the poverty line. These jobs employ 28%, 60%, 41% migrant women. On average 19% of migrant women cannot live off their income alone at the moment and 44% of them expect to not be able to live off of their pension in the future.
While the gender care-work and pay-gap help explain part of the living realities of migrant women, there are further “gaps” that strongly affect them.
Who Gets to Work and under What Conditions?
A crucial part of employment that we can’t ignore is the opportunity for work. While many might consider work a human right, not everyone even gets access to the job market. Women coming from non-EU countries need a special workers permit to be able to gain employment and need to have their previous diplomas and work experiences recognized for them to get a suitable job. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. Nearly one in five migrant women who applied to have their qualifications recognized in Austria faced rejection, leaving them unable to use their full set of skills and potential.
When we think about the fact that women with a migration background don’t usually have all the safety nets that a woman born in Austria has, she might be more inclined to accept positions where she is overqualified out of sheer necessity and might stay in unsatisfying jobs longer, due to the extra hurdles of employment.
The data shows that this is in fact the case: according to a recent research paper, citing European Social Survey data from 30 European countries, 23% of foreign-born women report being overqualified for their current job, a difference of 9 percentage points compared to native women. Austria specifically has one of the highest over-qualification gaps in Europe, with 10-18 percentage points difference between immigrant women and native men, native women and immigrant men. Living longer in the country does reduce this difference, but the effect is small.
While the opportunity for work is certainly a governmental issue, there are further structural factors at the company level that influence migrant women’s access to the job market: perceptions of their additional identities.
A Layered Reality: Different Identities Bring Different Challenges
Additional identities, such as religious or national identities add further layers to the experiences of women with a migration background in the workforce. Interestingly, it’s not just their actual identities (a woman can indeed be of a certain faith), but also what others believe their identity to be (assumptions made due to wearing certain items of clothing, for example). This is the case for women coming from countries largely perceived as Arab.
To test the effect perception of these women has on their employment opportunities, a group of researchers conducted a study in Germany. They used correspondence testing (sending out job applications) for open positions related to office work (secretaries or accountants with different seniority positions). Why is this particularly relevant? Due to the high quota of women working in these positions, the point was to see how much a woman’s additional identities influence her chances of success rather than “just” her identity as a woman.
Three personas were compared: one application had a German name, one a Turkish name, while the third one had a Turkish name and was wearing a headscarf in the photograph. Apart from these details, the job applications themselves were identical. All three have grown up in Germany and received their training from German school, only mentioned German and English as spoken languages, to suggest a second or third generation migrant background, and had several years of experience.
Out of almost 1.500 applications sent, Sandra Bauer (the German persona) got a job interview in almost 19% of cases. The Turkish persona with no head covering, 13,5% of the time. The persona with a headscarf? A mere 4,2%. To put it in other words, a woman with a migration background shown wearing a headscarf would have to send 4.5x times more applications to get the same number of interview invitations as a “Sandra Bauer”. In case that same person is aiming for a higher position, such as that of a chief accountant, they would have to send 7.6x times more applications.
This paper is not alone in documenting the discrimination faced in the job application process and it goes to show that beyond structural challenges, many women still have to battle the unconscious biases others hold against them. Research like this is crucial in understanding the particular workforce context that migrant women have to navigate and give invaluable insights for future policies. Still, there’s much to be done even in this aspect.
The research and policy gap
While existing programs and initiatives do provide some support, it’s not enough. We need further research and widespread policies. But while immigration itself has been studied over decades in several different contexts, it was mostly the experiences of men that were the object of research.
Often when there is a huge blind spot in research, this is also mirrored in policy as well. This is indeed the case for the EU. While a majority of European Union Member address the topic of immigration and set policies in place to promote integration and support migrant communities, very few specifically make migrant women a policy priority. Out of 54 policy proposals put forward by EU countries, only 20 (not even half!) targeted migrant women specifically. Most of them were also short-term actions (for up to three years) and were organized by NGOs rather than larger public sector organizations. And despite everyone’s best intentions, there were still several factors not taken into consideration that prevented women from participating: remote locations, lack of childcare opportunities or lack of adequate internet access in the case of online events. So even in the case of programs designed specifically to promote the inclusion of migrant women, the same issues that they face on the daily didn’t allow them to benefit from these valuable resources.
However, if the Overton window taught us anything, it’s that open, persistent, unrelenting public discourse is what pushes policies into being. Drawing attention to the topic, making it part of our daily conversations, correcting wrong claims when we hear them (migrant women only come here to make babies, for instance) all add to the public conversation. And the more it becomes part of the general conversation, the more likely it is to be translated into new regulations, laws and policies.
Every conversation, every action matters. By amplifying the voices of migrant women and advocating for their rights, we create pathways to a future where fairness and inclusivity thrive — where no one’s contributions are overlooked.
So, if there is only one thing you do today, then let it be to speak up!
Info und Quellen
Foto:
National Library of Medicine Double Jeopardy? The Interaction of Gender and Race
Österreichischer Integrationsfond: Zuwanderung & Arbeitsmarkt: Herausforderungen bei der Integration von Zuwander/innen
Österreichischer Integrationsfond: Statistische Broschuere zu Migration & Integration
Momentum Institut: Equal Pay Day Systemrelevanz ist weiblich, migrantisch und unterbezahlt
Arbeiterkammer: Kolleginnen und Kollegen mit anderen Staatsangehörigkeiten als der österreichischen am Arbeitsmarkt
Statistik Austria: Arbeitsmarktsituation von Migrant:innen in Österreich
Springer Nature: Occupation–Education Mismatch of Immigrant Women in Europe
Springer Nature: The labor market integration of immigrant women in Europe: context, theory, and evidence
ILR Review: Multiple Discrimination against Female Immigrants Wearing Headscarves
European Migration Network: Integration of migrant women in the EU
