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The migration of women has always been an important component of international migration. As of 2000, 49 per cent of all international migrants were women or girls, up from 46.6 per cent in 1960, and the proportion of women among migrants reached 51 per cent in the more developed regions. Europe had the highest proportion of female migrants and Western Asia and Southern Africa had the lowest. The gender distribution of international migrants varies substantially by country. The proportion of legal immigrants who are women is particularly high in the traditional immigration countries.
Following are four principal types of women migrants, distinguished by their marital status and their reasons for migrating:
- married women migrating in search of employment
- unmarried women migrating in search of employment
- unmarried women migrating for marriage reasons
- married women engaged in associational migration with no thought of employment.
Women appear to be more likely than men to migrate to join or accompany other family members or because of marriage, but this type of associational migration is not unique to women, as was pointed out in an earlier work on migrant women. Some men also move for associational reasons. As educational and employment opportunities open for women, they are also increasingly migrating as foreign students and workers. International migration often succeeds internal movements of women, particularly to urban areas. The draw of export-oriented factories is strong in Asia, Latin America and Africa.
For families and households, the migration of women into factory jobs, as well as into domestic and service labour, may be an important way to reduce the risks that subsistence agriculture poses when crops fail, particularly during drought. Employers, however, may hire female migrant workers because they appear to be “more docile and cheaper workers than men”. In some cases, young women employed in factories in their countries of origin learn skills they can transfer to better-paying jobs in developed countries.
Gender refers to the social meanings associated with being male or female, including the construction of identities, expectations, behaviour and power relationships that derive from social interaction. Those identities, practices and inequalities are, in turn, embodied in the social roles of women and men, in gender relations and in gender hierarchies (power relations between women and men). Gender is derived from social relations and cannot be seen as fixed and invariant over time and space, differing in this respect from the term “sex” which refers to the biological attributes of women and men.
The term “gender” acknowledges that ideologies, behaviours and practices with respect to women and men are socially learned and that gender norms, practices and hierarchies vary within regions, across societies and time, and are subject to change. It also recognises that such norms, practices and hierarchies may intersect with other socially constructed categories, such as those of race, ethnicity and/or class. In addition, relations of power—the capacity to control or influence others — are key elements in the social construction of gender.
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