Meanings of Empowerment from the Perspectives of Social Workers Working with Refugee Women in Türkiye

OpenAlex İngilizce

NGOs in Türkiye play a critical role in providing gender-responsive services and policies for women refugees. Social workers encounter challenges in advocating for these women’s rights due to state relations and funding constraints. These challenges underscore the importance of understanding the experiences of social workers seeking to empower refugee women. This study aims to understand how social workers interpret the concept of empowerment and to explore how they are currently shaping their professional practices within NGOs in Türkiye, with the intention of enhancing the effectiveness of empowerment-focused social work with refugee women. This study uses a phenomenological qualitative research approach to explore the experiences of professionals working with refugee women in Türkiye. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 20 professionals selected via purposive and snowball sampling. Thematic analysis highlighted two main findings: professionals define empowerment as the intersection of personal values and professional expertise, and the empowerment journey unfolds in a cyclical, interdependent sequence. Building on these findings, future research should examine how professional satisfaction, burnout, and institutional barriers influence the long-term sustainability of cyclical empowerment practices among social workers in practice.