Women migration: An origin country perspective

Most of research on migration tends to neglect the gender dimension of migration, despite the fact that female accounts for nearly half of the migration population. Salient socioeconomic and demographic changes that occurred first in developed countries and later in newly industrialized economies went hand in hand with global liberalization of trade and investment and significantly contributed to a dramatic increase in women migration. In some regions of the world, the number of women migrants has surpassed their male counterparts although it varied from decade to decade. Multiple aspects of women migration such as the causes of women migration, characteristics of women migration, situations of migratory women in destination society, and consequences of women migration to receiving country, to origin country and community, to family left in home country, and to migrants themselves have left unearthed. The literature is especially scarce on the topic of women migration effects on the family left behind in country of origin. This research focuses on women migration and examines the effects of migration in general and women migration in particular on the family left in the country of origin. Data of Latin American Migration Project (LAMP) is used to examine several hypotheses on the effects of migration and women migration on the left behind.