Journal of Discourse Review
Open Access Humanitarian Scholarship
7 days
Time to first decision
Open Access Humanitarian Scholarship
Time to first decision
Volume: 1 Issue: 3
Year: 2025, Page: 262-271,
Received: Sept. 20, 2025 Accepted: Oct. 29, 2025 Published: Dec. 31, 2025
The refugee experience is inherently debilitating. Although women constitute a significant proportion of forcibly displaced populations, humanitarian and legal discourses continue to construct them through assumptions of passivity and dependence. Even within UNHCR-administered camps, protection frameworks often remain inattentive to gender, particularly in South Asia, where state laws and institutional practices reproduce gender bias. The persistent rightlessness of refugee women reflects the concealment of gender-specific violence, in which women are targeted not as individuals but as members of a homogenized category labelled “women.” Sociologically, infantilisation operates through institutional norms and power relations that deny women agency and autonomy. Women and girls are routinely classified as a “vulnerable group,” yet vulnerability is not inherent but produced through political, legal, and social conditions. An exclusive focus on vulnerability risks generating narratives of helplessness that silence women’s voices and obscure their capacities for participation and leadership. Adopting a gender-sensitive framework, this paper examines how refugee women are constructed as non-persons and analyses the sociological implications of infantilisation. Patriarchy is conceptualized as a culturally sanctioned, masculinized hierarchy embedded within state power. Methodologically, the study is based on a systematic thematic review of academic literature sourced through digital databases, with analysis concluding at academic saturation.
Keywords: Refugee, Infantilisation, De-maturation, Gender-based violence, Vulnerability, Patriarchy
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