Female Refugees in Vermont Lead as Breadwinners

By Amy Lieberman

WeNews correspondent

Monday, September 6, 2010

Female refugees take many paths to a Vermont resettlement program. But a drive to support their families--sometimes with the first paid employment of their lives--buoys many along, often more successfully than male counterparts.

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Huge Career Setback for Others

Hsar Ra Bin Ji outside the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program's office in Colchester, Vt. For some, such as 40-year-old Monica (not her real name), however, resettlement can mean a huge career setback.

She and her family fled political turmoil in their native South Asian country, where a death threat forced them to flee quickly, "like electricity." She left a prestigious job, domestic help and friends. Now her polished English is helping her make friends in Vermont, but her high-level degree and work experience aren't helping her job search.

Both Monica and her husband were both "at the top of the ladder," but she was the one who jumped "to the bottom rung" and took the first job that arose in a medical facility, she said, declining to elaborate further. She supported the family for three months so her husband could stay home and look for a better position.

"It's a big step down for both of us, but as a woman I thought it would be easier for me to take the position than to ask him to," the mother of three said. "Some days I think, 'Oh boy, what am I doing here?' But then I think, 'No. I have a job. I should just be thankful for that.'"

Devi Chapagai, a Bhutanese refugee of Nepali ethnicity, is also in the program, which linked her husband, who holds a master's degree, to a bagel shop that hired him as an apprentice. Once he was earning money, Chapagai returned to school and became a licensed nurse assistant. That brings in "much more than a housekeeper would," she said.

Drawing on Past Experiences

Three other Bhutanese women in the program are striving to develop a small organic farm, drawing on their families' farming days in the mountains of Bhutan, before the government started in the late 1980s expelling approximately 100,000 ethnic Nepali.

"We never thought we would come here to the U.S. and leave the camp, forget farming," said 50-year-old Bhadri Adhikari, who like many others spent 17 years in a refugee camp in Nepal. She spoke through a Nepali translator. "I would like a full-time job, to help out however I can, but we are safe. That is the most important thing."

Other middle-aged women, also eager for work, dominate the English classes the program runs at a local reform synagogue. At a recent lunch break this summer some of them could be seen tucking back their saris and squatting on the curb.

One of them summed up why they were all there.

"No class, no English, no job, no money," one woman from Bhutan said, surrounded by companions. She raised her hands in the air and drew sympathetic laughter from all sides.