Until recently, the paucity of empirical data on refugee women has led to widespread generalization about the plight, number and condition of women in refugee communities. Discussion of refugee women tends to focus on their vulnerability and their experience as victims in acts of sexual violence and other forms of abuse. Very few studies document the less dramatic transformation of women's lives which occurs as a direct outcome of forced displacement. Using evidence from primary data collected among Burundi refugees in Tanzania during 1987, the paper contends that contrary to popular perception the sex ratio in African refugee settlements is much more balanced than has been assumed. This has implications for policies which associate deprivation with the predominance of women in African refugee settlements.As men and women come to terms with a redefinition of their access to resources patriarchal tendencies within the pre-migration societies and the male bias of the settlement programme combine to marginalize women from the administrative structures and, more severely, from participating in the wider Tanzanian society. Nevertheless within the restricted space of the settlement, in the absence of alternatives, both men and women have been fully integrated into the market economy as marginalized direct producers. Therefore, they are also subjected to the crises of social reproduction now facing the Tanzanian peasantry. Gender is shown to be an important, but not all encompassing, factor in the reconstruction and control over space as refugees adjust to the new environments. © 1991 Oxford University Press.

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Tanzania sex ratio gender refugee women Burundi refugees