Safe Spaces: As the Syrian crisis forces women to fend for themselves, female refugees in Jordan are learning to cope

In some ways, Sara Yusuf considers herself lucky, she says, sitting on a foldout chair in a clean, spare room with chipped white tiles. She left her home in Ghouta in western Syria in the summer of 2013 with her mother, sister, and two children. Less than a month after they left, the Syrian government struck Ghouta with rockets containing the nerve agent sarin. Hundreds of people—estimates range from 280 to 1,700—died violent and painful deaths. "I think God was protecting us," says Sara, who now lives in Jordan.

In other ways, she doesn't feel lucky at all. In 2012, her husband went missing. Sara still doesn't know whether he is alive or dead. Mohammed (not his real name) was a low-ranking government employee. They had married young—Sara, who is 28 now, was just 18 and barely out of school. When the Syrian war began as a series of peaceful uprisings in 2011, the couple was living a fairly comfortable life, with a small child and a baby on the way. As the protests spread across the country, Mohammed was caught up in the wave of excitement. He attended a demonstration in Ghouta, enthused by the possibility of a better and more democratic Syria.

He never came home from that protest. "The most difficult thing is not knowing," says Sara, a slight woman who clenches and unclenches her fists as she talks. "I don't know whether to grieve for him, or whether I should still be waiting."

For eight months, Sara and her relatives asked authorities for information about Mohammed. Their situation was sadly typical: It is estimated that around 200,000 Syrians have been arbitrarily detained since the war began. The death toll is estimated to be 470,000. Although she was young and not particularly confident, Sara went to the prisons to ask whether he was there. This was risky; there were stories of prisoners' relatives also being arrested. The family decided to flee. "I didn't want to leave Ghouta, in case Mohammed came back. I didn't have any way to get word to him about our whereabouts, and I was afraid he would not be able to find us," says Sara, her eyes filling with tears. Ultimately, it was concern for her children that prompted her to go.

Sara's sister was in a similar situation—her husband had also disappeared, and they presumed he had been either arrested or killed. The three women—Sara, her mother, and her sister—fled to Jordan with the two sisters' children. They were immediately placed in the Zaatari refugee camp in northwest Jordan, where they stayed for four months. They had come with savings, but these quickly dissipated. "The conditions there were very bad," says Sara's mother, Soraya, who still lives with her. "We spent all our savings and we had no way to earn a living. We were three women alone for the first time. Just imagine—I have two daughters, and neither know anything of their husbands."

None of the women had ever worked before; they had all depended on their husbands to be the breadwinners. Now, they had to find a way to survive. They left Zaatari and rented accommodations outside the camp. Sara and her sister got low-paying jobs as farm laborers, and Soraya—who, at 65, was frail and unable to do manual labor—looked after the children.

"We worked a lot for very little money," says Sara. "I was paid five Jordanian Dinars [$7] per day. The bosses would sometimes make unpleasant comments and look at us while we worked, but we had no choice." They struggled to make rent and lived with the constant fear that the lewd comments from male colleagues might escalate into something worse. This went on for several months. The situation felt unsustainable. And then, a lifeline appeared.

Sara heard from a colleague on the farm about an apartment building in a suburb of...