Measuring Gender Differentials in Migration

Benoy Peter, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)

Gender plays a crucial role in migration since mobility of men and women are subject to a great number of cultural restrictions determining their autonomy. Though ethnic variance in migration has been a subject widely researched, little efforts have been done to capture gender differentials in migration within and between religions, regions, communities, cultures etc. Hence an attempt was made to develop an innovative simplified methodology to measure the same. Gender Migration Indices were computed along and across communities and migration streams by taking ratios of number of households having migrant men and women giving equal weights to households irrespective of the number of migrants they have of a particular gender rather than taking absolute number of men and women.The methodology was tested using data from the Muslim and Non-Muslim households of Kerala having migrants. Results provide valid measures of the gender differentials in migration existing within and among the respective households proving the reliability of the methodology.