Women on the Move: Stalled Gender Revolution in Global Migration

Abstract

This chapter examines how structural inequalities of gender including the ideology of female domesticity, non-egalitarian division of household labor, sex-segmented labor market, and a glass ceiling shape the independent migration of women. It empirically traces gendered inequalities in transnational households, labor migration, and educational migration. Questioning the dominant feminist paradigm on gender and migration which assumes that migration is a gender equalizing process, we argue that while women achieve some gains in status and in their interpersonal relations, their experiences remain unequivocally structured by gender inequities resulting in a gender stall in women’s global migration.