GENDER AND TRANSNATIONALISM

WOMEN AND MIGRATION

• The World Health Organization defines gender as the result of socially constructed ideas about the behavior, actions, and roles a particular sex performs. The beliefs, values and attitude taken up and exhibited by them is as per the agreeable norms of the society and the personal opinions of the person is not taken into the primary consideration of assignment of gender and imposition of gender roles as per the assigned gender.

MIGRATION

• Migration and movements across borders have increased during the past decades.

• One of the most significant trends in migration has been the entry of women into mobility streams that had been primarily male.

• As of 2000, about 49 percent of the world’s migrants were women, up from 46.6 percent in 1960 . Significantly, the proportion of migrants who are women has grown to 51 percent in more developed regions

• The highest proportions of women are in Europe and the lowest proportions are in Northern Africa.

• About half of the migrants in the world today are women, as has been the case for decades. While many women accompany or join family members, increasing numbers of female migrants migrate on their own.

• They are the principal wage earners for themselves and their families. Most women move voluntarily, but a significant number are forced migrants who have fought conflict, persecution, environmental degradation, natural disasters and other situations that affect their habitat and livelihood

• In the post 1970’s wave of Chinese transnational migrants, most of them were women. In Australia, United States and Canada, the increased flows relate to the contribution from Asian sources of immigration. Also, from the mid 1980’s women have outnumbered male immigrants to Australia.

• In 2002, for example, 54 percent of legal immigrants to the United States were women. In places that only permit temporary migration, the proportion of men migrating may be higher, particularly if admission is limited to certain types of occupations typically dominated by men (e.g., miners or information technology workers)

• Differences can be seen among different emigration countries. While the Philippines has considerably higher proportion of female migrants living abroad (about 60 percent in data collected during the 1990s), Mexico has many more male emigrants (69 percent in a survey conducted in 1995).

GENERAL CAUSES

• This has been happening as an effect of persistent gender division of labor by industry and inequalities in terms of occupational distribution and remuneration. The influence of gender stereotypes in the division of labor within national borders result in feminine jobs that are matched with the demand from overseas

• . Also, unequal economical development in the Asian region has increased the gap between poor and rich countries and the important variations in earnings are very influential in international labor migration.

• Also, unfortunately, one of the most significant features of the feminization of migration is the global traffic of women.

• Labor supply and demand facilitated by global capitalism result in a transnational organization that benefits from human trafficking-sex workers, domestic slaves, marriage partners and unskilled laborers.

• Internal migration and movements across borders have increased during the past

decades.

TYPES OF FEMALE MIGRANTS

• Thadani and Todaro (1984) described four principal types of female migrants, distinguished by their marital status and their reasons for migrating: 1) married women migrating in search of employment;

• 2) unmarried women migrating in search of employment;

• 3) unmarried women migrating for marriage reasons and

• 4) married women engaged in associational migration with no thought of employment)

• Women appear to be more likely than men to migrate to joinor accompany other family members or because of marriage, but this type of associational migration is not unique to women as was pointed out in early work on women migrants, some men move for associational reasons also.

SPECIFIC FACTORS

• Individual factors include age, birth order, race/ethnicity, urban/rural origins,

• marital status (single, married, divorced, widowed)

• reproductive status (children or no children)• role in the family (wife, daughter, mother)• position in family (authoritative or subordinate)

educational status• occupational skills/training• labour force experience• class position

• Family factors include size, age/sex composition, life-cycle stage, structure(nuclear, extended, etc.), status (single parent, both parents, etc.), and class standing.

• Societal factors include those community norms and cultural values that determine whether or not women can migrate and, if they can, how (i.e., labour or family reunification) and with whom (alone or with family).

• These factors influence not only whether a woman moves but they also influence the countries to which women migrate. 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 (United States, Canada and Australia).

SOCIAL ADAPTATION AND PSICHOLOGY

• There are evidences that men and women participate differently in transnational social spaces. Men appear to be more committed to the maintenance of public and institutionalized social spaces while women appear to be more committed to participating in the life of the receiving country. The literature on migration shows that men and women experience differently their encounters with receiving societies.

• Now, everything depends very much of the nature of the transit, more exactly, it matters if the migration is from a less democratic to a more democratic state, from a state with lower respect for human rights and gender to one with higher respect for these categories .

• For instance, in the United States or Scandinavian countries, immigrant women may have better access to institutional protection, social security, protection against abuses and even if they are not participating on the labor market, their social roles as wives improve comparing to how they might been defined in their countries of origins(if we’re considering Islamic countries or even east European countries).

• On the other hand, due to the new culture and social pressure men can be involved in activities or chores that they used to consider it belongs to the women gender role-such as helping with children and household work. As a result, men loose their status and women empower theirs.

• Men seem to suffer traumas over this changing of status and most of them attempt to reinforce their own values and reconfirm their identity in the new environment that is culturally new for them but hence is a difficult process, they eager to come back home where they already have the cultural status quo while women who adapt better develop a fear of returning home to traditional gender loss and deprivation of freedom.

FINAL CONCLUSION

Given the different gender experiences of migration, some authors argue that women adapt faster than men to the norms and values of receiving country.