Challenging Becomings: Gender Dynamics in the Syrian Medical-Humanitarian Response

This article analyses gender dynamics in the Syrian medical-humanitarian response in non-government-controlled areas, which proved to be a deeply gendered experience. Drawing on existing literature and interviews conducted in Turkey with women employed by Syrian local NGOs, INGOs, and IOs, it explores the experiences of women health care workers in the response, and the adversity they encountered. Resisting the imagery of the masculine humanitarian archetype, it argues that women's main quandary was how to gain acceptance as the professionals they knew they were, through a process of experimentation and becoming, drawing on Mattingly's concept of 'moral laboratories'.