Anna Efimova
What are the social and labor conditions faced by Ukrainian refugee women fleeing to Europe in the aftermath of the full-scale invasion? How is this vulnerable group being exploited for sexual and labor purposes? Journalist and gender researcher Anna Efimova investigates the issue
In Search of a New Discourse
The second season of one of Netflix’s most popular series, Emily in Paris, released in late 2022, features a Ukrainian character named Petra. She meets Emily, an American expatriate living in Paris, during a French language class. The two women go shopping together, and in one of the boutiques, Petra shoplifts several clothing items. When Emily insists that she return the stolen goods, Petra exclaims in Ukrainian, “You're crazy! I can't, I'll be deported for this!” and runs away. The character does not reappear in the series.
Following the show’s release, Ukrainian actress Daria Panchenko, who portrayed Petra, faced a wave of criticism from Ukrainian audiences that eventually led her to delete her Instagram account. Critics argued that the stereotypical character added nothing to the plot and failed to represent Ukrainians in a meaningful way. Ukraine’s Minister of Culture, Oleksandr Tkachenko, condemned the portrayal as an “offensive caricature.” Ukrainian influencers echoed this sentiment, labeling the depiction “an absolute scandal and a shame.”
The filming of the second season of Emily in Paris took place in May and July 2021, before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Nevertheless, the series accurately reflects the prejudices faced by Ukrainian women who fled Russian bombardments and sought refuge in Western Europe. It wasn’t helping that, after the outbreak of the full-scale war, social media and news outlets were flooded with Russian propaganda steeped in gender stereotypes. These materials referred to Ukrainian women by the pejorative term “khokhlushka,” portraying them either as uneducated and lazy opportunists taking advantage of European welfare benefits or as “prostitutes” spreading disease.
The current wave of migration from Ukraine to Europe is the largest and most rapid forced displacement on the continent since World War II (1, 2). Since February 2022, 14 million Ukrainians have been forced to leave their homes. As of fall 2024, an estimated 6.7 million Ukrainians remain displaced, with women and children constituting 90 percent of the population, according to the Ukraine Response Regional Gender Task Force.*
The settlement patterns of Ukrainian women in Europe are often indicative of their future plans. Those who hope to return home tend to stay in countries that border Ukraine (3), while those who see no immediate prospect of return opt for Western European countries with better living standards (4).
Ukrainian women often document their experiences as refugees on TikTok, which has become a platform for them to represent themselves in Western media. Through simple videos filmed in everyday settings, these women process their traumatic experiences while reaching tens of thousands of viewers (5). Some mock the venomous judgments of their compatriots, while others vent their frustrations with European bureaucracy or life in refugee camps. The stories often touch upon starting anew as a middle-aged woman, adjusting to the changes in habits and personality that migration brings, or grappling with how quickly their children grow accustomed to a higher standard of living abroad.
Although many videos humorously convey doubts about returning to Ukraine, a significant number of refugee women — despite their homesickness — plan to build new lives in their adopted countries (4). The vast majority of Ukrainian refugees, including 6.2 million women and children, have settled in the European Union, with smaller numbers in Moldova (123,000), the United Kingdom (248,000), Turkey (38,000), and Georgia (28,000) [translator’s note: the EU does not restrict male refugees from Ukraine from crossing its borders, but due to the legal regime of martial law Ukraine prohibits men of conscription age and good health from leaving the country].
‘Unprofessional’ Migrants
Despite Russian propaganda efforts, Ukrainians received unprecedented support from European institutions in the first months of the full-scale invasion.
In the European Union, where most refugees sought safety, a special temporary protection status was introduced. This status allowed Ukrainians to reside legally, access employment, and use healthcare services in their host countries. Some EU member states also provided cash benefits to refugees and asylum seekers. Children were promptly enrolled in kindergartens and schools.
Obtaining temporary protection was straightforward: refugees needed only to register with local authorities. Ukrainians were permitted entry into the EU with internal passports or citizen IDs, and even their pets were accommodated — vaccinated for free at the border and issued European documents.
Additionally, under temporary protection, Ukrainian women retained the ability to travel freely to and from their home country (6), a right denied to refugees from other regions, such as Syria or Iran. This level of support stood in stark contrast to the EU’s approach during the 2015–2016 refugee crisis when many of the same countries resisted accepting asylum seekers from the Middle East.
Many Europeans viewed Ukrainian refugees through the lens of the war with Russia, perceiving them as victims of a conflict that could also endanger European security. The fact that most Ukrainian refugees were Caucasian women and children made them appear less of a “threat” compared to, for example, young men from Somalia or Afghanistan.
Some politicians, institutions, and ordinary Europeans (though not all) categorized refugees according to ethnic, cultural, social, political, and economic factors (7). This led to a stark dichotomy in public discourse, where certain groups of refugees were deemed worthy of state protection and welfare, while others were not (8).
Jimmy Åkesson, leader of the Sweden Democrats — the country’s second-largest party and the largest right-wing force in parliament — highlighted this distinction at the start of the full-scale invasion. “Professional migrants, mostly Muslim men of war age, who may have previously been refugees from war, are a completely different matter than women and children who come by ferry from Poland just one or a few days after leaving their homes in a Christian and largely Western country in our immediate vicinity,” he remarked.
At the same time, NGOs and volunteer initiatives supporting Ukrainian refugees generally make no distinction between them and other displaced people, such as those from the Middle East. Polish organizations like Salam Lab Grupa Granica, and Fundacja Ocalenie, for instance, are actively highlighting the humanitarian crisis on the Polish-Belarusian border, where 137 people have died since the fall of 2021. These people, fleeing Syria, Afghanistan, Congo, and Iraq, sought refuge in the EU via Belarus but were stranded on the Belarusian side when Polish border guards refused them entry. These same organizations have been instrumental in assisting refugees and asylum seekers, helping them secure housing, access free Polish language courses, and navigate the many challenges of resettling in a new country.
Labor Conditions of Ukrainian Refugee Women in the EU
Despite the impressive support measures, integrating women into host communities remains challenging due to various forms of discrimination. Forcibly displaced women often find themselves at the intersection of multiple axes of vulnerability: gender, class, race, nationality, and ethnicity (9). Ukrainian refugee women carry all the responsibilities traditionally assigned to them in Ukrainian society but now must fulfill these roles in a foreign country without the usual support systems.
Before fleeing, Ukrainian women typically spent at least 25 hours a week on unpaid household labor. In a foreign country, these responsibilities often consume even more time, as previous support systems are disrupted and new ones have yet to be established. For instance, in 2022, between 75 and 85 percent of Ukrainian children in Moldova, Slovakia, and Romania did not attend local schools but instead continued their studies remotely through Ukrainian schools. In some cases, Ukrainian refugee women have set up informal home-based day-care centers, where one woman cares for the children of several others while they run errands or work.
However, such self-organized initiatives remain limited. One possible reason lies in traditional gender roles in Ukrainian society. According to a UN survey, 65 percent of men and 55 percent of women in Ukraine believe that mothers of preschool children should devote all their time to child-rearing rather than working.
The employment rate of Ukrainian refugee women remains low, largely due to barriers to accessing work. Generally, the availability of kindergartens and medical care significantly influences employment rates. For example, according to the Institute for Employment Research (IAB), only 27 percent of Ukrainian refugee women are employed in Germany, compared to over 50 percent in the UK, the Netherlands, and Lithuania (10).
Most Ukrainian refugee women hold higher education degrees. However, in countries hosting the largest numbers of Ukrainian refugees — such as Germany (1.2 million), Poland (900,000), and the Czech Republic (370,000) — continuing a professional career often requires formal recognition of qualifications. This process is both time-consuming and dependent on proficiency in the local language. Consequently, more than half of Ukrainian women with higher education in European countries are employed in low-skilled jobs. These jobs typically offer flexible schedules that allow them to care for children or manage other responsibilities that are socially perceived as “women’s work.”
Other migrant women in the European labor market face challenges similar to those of Ukrainian refugees. As of 2019, over 40 percent of working-age migrant women in the EU were overqualified for their jobs, a rate nearly double that of female EU nationals (21.1 percent).
The language barrier remains a significant constraint for refugee women seeking employment. For example, 57 percent of Ukrainian refugee women in Romania, 53 percent in Slovakia, 44 percent in Poland, 40 percent in Hungary, and 39 percent in Moldova cited a lack of proficiency in the local language as the biggest obstacle to finding work. This barrier also increases the risk of labor exploitation. In Romania, cases were reported where Ukrainian refugees were paid less than local workers, even though they were assigned heavier workloads. Employment contracts were often not translated into Ukrainian, and filing complaints with labor inspectorates proved difficult, as inspectors typically did not speak Ukrainian or English. Cases of severe exploitation were also documented. Some refugees were housed in inhumane conditions, forced to work 18-hour days, and had their passports confiscated. According to a Ukrainian human rights activist, many of these exploitative job offers appear in Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic.
At the same time, in countries such as Luxembourg, Poland, and Germany, refugees have access to free language courses organized by the state, businesses, and NGOs. Learning the local language, even at a basic level, helps ease the stress of finding employment and adjusting to life in a new environment. However, challenges in the labor market persist due to factors beyond language barriers.
The Most Vulnerable Group
Upon crossing borders, such as into Poland, or arriving at train stations, Ukrainian refugee women were often approached by people claiming to be concerned citizens, volunteers, or recruiters from “agencies, offering accommodation.” In reality, these individuals sought to exploit the women by forcing them into prostitution. Such cases were alarmingly common at the beginning of the full-scale invasion.
According to Anastasia Podorozhnaya, founder of the Martynka hotline for Ukrainian women in vulnerable situations, Ukrainian women already had the highest rate of involvement in human trafficking in Europe prior to the full-scale invasion — a rate that has increased since then. By 2023, her organization had encountered five cases of trafficking.
Women are often recruited into prostitution through Telegram chats and social media groups that provide information on how to escape war zones. In 2023, Spanish authorities uncovered a criminal group that lured women from Ukraine and Belarus with false promises of employment as hostesses and administrators, under the guise of a recruitment agency. Upon arrival, these women were confined to private residences, isolated from the outside world, and coerced into prostitution in nightclubs.
Women in vulnerable situations are also targeted through manipulative romantic relationships. In these cases, a man first seeks to create an emotional bond or economic dependency, for example, by inviting the woman to live with him. Later, he coerces her into performing webcam work or sex work with other men, framing it as a way “to improve their financial situation.”
According to human rights advocates, another common tactic to lure women into sex work is through advertisements for cheap apartments. When women arrived to view the apartments, they often discovered that the advertised price covered only half the rent — the landlords demanded the remaining payment in the form of sexual favors.
Sex Work Polska, Poland’s largest organization researching the conditions of sex workers and providing support, estimates that around 60 percent of sex workers in Poland are Ukrainian citizens. Human rights activists argue that Ukrainian women have become particularly vulnerable targets for the pornography and sex industries. This is partly due to their visa-free access to the European Union and the automatic granting of residence permits under temporary protection measures following the full-scale invasion.
In March 2022, the Polish government passed a special law aimed at increasing penalties for human trafficking, forced prostitution, and pimping. However, as of March 2024, Polish police had officially opened only two legal cases of sex trafficking involving Ukrainian refugee women.
Outside the EU, the number of Ukrainian women engaged in sex work has risen since February 24, 2022. This is the case in tourist cities across Georgia. Moreover, although no prior statistics are available for comparison, human rights advocates estimate that in Moldova around 30 Ukrainian refugee women are now engaged in providing sexual services to support themselves — although no prior statistics are available for comparison. It remains difficult to estimate how many cases go unnoticed by aid organizations. Additionally, some Ukrainian sex workers based in Poland have begun traveling to Germany to earn a living, as their income in Poland has declined.
However, there are cases where women have been successfully rescued from such situations. According to a study by the Ukrainian human rights organization Legalife-Ukraine, none of the sex workers evacuated to Poland by NGOs returned to their previous line of work. The women cited various reasons, including the need to care for dependents, efforts to find alternative employment, and concerns about jeopardizing their temporary protection status and associated benefits.
The Rise of OnlyFans Agencies
Thomson Reuters researchers discovered that after the onset of the full-scale invasion, internet searches for pornographic content featuring Ukrainian women surged significantly. Views of videos allegedly featuring Ukrainian refugees increased by 300 percent in March 2022 and continued to rise throughout 2023. At the same time, the number of webcam studios employing mostly Ukrainian women increased.
Job advertisements for positions such as “chatters” or “sexters” have become widespread. These people communicate with clients on behalf of webcam models (often on platforms such as OnlyFans) to maximize sales of the model’s content. One such ad reads, “Looking for someone with experience to help run an OF account! Traffic + sexting experience etc. There is one model, a second on the way.” Many of these roles require employees to operate on Kyiv time, as specified in the recruitment process.
Contrary to popular belief, the women who work as support staff on OnlyFans or similar platforms do not earn substantial amounts of money, and their working conditions are far from the appealing scenarios described by the procurers. The night shift is often prioritized because of a so-called “labor shortage.” Profits are heavily skewed: beginners typically earn only $300–$400 per month, receiving between 16 and 25 percent of each sale. Models receive equally modest earnings, averaging around 25 percent of sales. The remaining profit is pocketed by the agency owners. A Training Guide to Open Your Own OnlyFans Agency is available online to help aspiring entrepreneurs enter this exploitative industry.
Meanwhile, it has become increasingly difficult for NGOs and voluntary organizations to help women coerced into pornography or prostitution. In 2023, the Martynka Initiative provided about 20 hours of free legal services per month to Ukrainian women, including survivors of trafficking. However, donor funding for such programs has dwindled. According to Martynka founder Anastasia Podorozhnaya, donors cite reports from the UN migration agency that claim no significant rise in trafficking cases since the full-scale invasion began.
Withdrawal of Support Measures
As the war enters its third year, several countries have begun to scale back their support measures for Ukrainian refugees that were introduced in 2022. In Norway, a non-EU country, Ukrainians will no longer be automatically granted refugee status as of September 2024. Germany has announced it will halve its refugee budget in 2025. Similarly, grassroots initiatives in Georgia that have provided Ukrainian refugees with medicine and basic necessities are struggling due to dwindling donations.
Ukrainian authorities are urging the EU to create programs to encourage refugees to return home. However, the longer the war drags on, the less feasible this prospect seems. Between May 2023 and February 2024, the proportion of Ukrainian refugees expressing doubts about returning home increased from 65 to 77 percent.
Some countries are extending support measures for refugees. For example, starting next year, the EU and the UK will extend the validity of documents permitting Ukrainian refugees to live legally on their territories by nearly 1.5 years. Latvia is set to increase state allowances, while Lithuania plans to introduce free public transportation for refugees. The EU has pledged to support Ukrainians regardless of whether they choose to return home or remain abroad.
Ultimately, the decision will rest with the Ukrainian refugees — most of whom are women. Their choices are likely to be shaped not so much by considerations of Ukraine’s future or its demographic prospects after the war, but rather by concerns about the well-being and opportunities for their children that motivated them to leave the war zone in the first place.
- The original text, written in Russian, uses the feminine grammatical gender (беженки) to refer to Ukrainian refugees. This choice emphasizes the focus on gender issues while also reflecting the reality that the vast majority of refugees are women and children. In this translation, both “Ukrainian refugees” and “Ukrainian refugee women” are used, depending on the context and the gender specificity of the issues discussed.
Notes:
- Teodorescu, L. (2024). Women on the Move: Understanding the female face of migration to develop targeted policies. European View, 23(1), 55-63.
- Seberíni, A., Lacová, Ž., Gubalová, J., & Murray Svidroňová, M. (2024). The Challenges of Ukrainian Refugees in Slovakia – Labour Market Integration Aspects with the Help of NGOs. IntechOpen.
- Andrews, J., Isański, J., Nowak, M., Sereda, V., Vacroux, A., & Vakhitova, H. (2023, July). Feminized forced migration: Ukrainian war refugees. In Women's Studies International Forum (Vol. 99, p. 102756). Pergamon.
- Kohlenberger, J., Buber-Ennser, I., Pędziwiatr, K., Rengs, B., Setz, I., Brzozowski, J., & Pronizius, E. (2023). High self-selection of Ukrainian refugees into Europe: Evidence from Kraków and Vienna. Plos one, 18(12).
- To read more on the topic of processing trauma through social media see O'Connor, C., Brown, G., Debono, J., Suty, L., & Joffe, H. (2024). How trauma is represented on social media: Analysis of# trauma content on TikTok. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy.
- Maidanik, I. (2024). The forced migration from Ukraine after the full-scale Russian invasion: dynamics and decision-making drivers. European Societies, 26(2), 469-480.
- Mccloskey, S. (2022). The War In Ukraine Has Revealed A Hierarchy Of Victims. Policy & Practice: A Development Education Review, (34).
- Blomqvist Mickelsson, T. (2024). Ukrainian refugees’ reception in Swedish sports clubs:‘deservingness’ and ‘promising victimhood. European journal of social work, 27(2), 267-280.
- Crenshaw, K. W. (2013). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. In The public nature of private violence (pp. 93-118). Routledge.
- Kosyakova, Yuliya et al. (2024). Labour market integration of Ukrainian refugees: An international perspective, IAB-Forschungsbericht, No. 16/2024en, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg.