Disability cuts Somali women’s employment odds by about a third, survey analysis finds

Women with disabilities in Somalia are significantly less likely to be employed than women without disabilities, according to a cross-sectional analysis of the nationally representative Somali Integrated Household Budget Survey 2022, published in BMC Public Health. After adjusting for demographic, socioeconomic, and geographic factors, disability status was associated with roughly 32 percent lower odds of employment, a gap the authors link to compounded disadvantage at the intersection of gender and disability in a fragile, conflict-affected state. The study drew on the Somali Integrated Household Budget Survey, or SIHBS 2022, which was designed to cover 17 of Somalia's 18 regions; Middle Juba was excluded because of security challenges.

From the survey, the researchers assembled an analytical cohort of 12,162 women aged 15 years and above. Disability was measured with the Washington Group Short Set, a widely used question module that classifies people as having a disability if they report substantial difficulty in any of its core domains, using an inclusive threshold of a domain score of two or higher. Employment was defined according to the ICLS-19 international statistical framework.

An important limitation is that the survey does not allow the full sample to be split between unemployed women who are actively seeking work and women who are economically inactive, so the non-employed category combines both groups. The analysis used survey-weighted logistic regression in R, estimating an unadjusted model and an adjusted model that controlled for age, education, marital status, and geographic region. The prevalence of disability in the sample was 11.7 percent, with a 95 percent confidence interval of 10.5 to 12.1 percent.

The overall employment rate for women was strikingly low at just 12.2 percent, underscoring how limited women's labour market participation remains across Somalia regardless of disability status. In the unadjusted model, women with disabilities showed non-significantly lower odds of employment, with a crude odds ratio of 0.896 and a p-value of 0.326. Once the model adjusted for other factors, however, the association became statistically significant: the adjusted odds ratio was 0.678, with a 95 percent confidence interval of 0.522 to 0.881 and a p-value of 0.004.

This corresponds to approximately 32 percent lower odds of employment for women with disabilities compared with women without disabilities. Translated into absolute terms, the average partial effect amounted to a 3.44 percentage-point lower predicted probability of employment, with a 95 percent confidence interval spanning minus 5.58 to minus 1.28 percentage points. Because the baseline employment rate for women is only 12.2 percent, a gap of that magnitude represents a substantial relative loss of opportunity within an already constrained labour market.

Beyond disability status, the strongest correlates of women's employment in the analysis were age, educational attainment, marital status, and geographic region. The authors caution that the precision of their estimates depends on an approximation: the survey's true cluster structure could not be fully reproduced in the analysis, so the inference rests on a household-level approximation of the clustering. Cross-sectional data also cannot establish causation, and the combined unemployed-and-inactive category blurs an important distinction in how exclusion from work operates.

Nevertheless, the persistence of an adjusted association between disability and employment after accounting for structural factors carries clear policy weight. The researchers argue that the findings support prioritizing disability-inclusive employment policies, improving educational access for women with disabilities, and designing region-specific interventions to foster more equitable participation in Somalia's labour market.

Subject of Research: Employment disparities among women with disabilities in Somalia using national household survey data

Article Title: Employment among women with disabilities in Somalia: evidence from the Somali integrated household budget survey 2022

Article References: Hassan, M. F., & Abdi, A. M. (2026). Employment among women with disabilities in Somalia: evidence from the Somali integrated household budget survey 2022. BMC Public Health. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-026-30100-w

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12889-026-30100-w

Keywords: Somalia, women with disabilities, employment, Washington Group Short Set, household budget survey, logistic regression, labour market, fragile states, BMC Public Health, disability inclusion, women, disabilities