Gender, Immigration, and Labor Market Activity in New Global Contexts by the 21st Century

• In Event: 119 - Regular Session. Immigration and Gender

Abstract

Although women’s representation among international migrants in many countries has risen over the last 100 years (Zlotnik 2003; Donato et al. 2011; Donato and Piya 2013), we know far less about gender gaps in the labor force participation of immigrants across a wide span of host societies. Prior studies have established that immigrant women in the United States, Canada, and Israel have labor market outcomes that are doubly disadvantaged because of their sex and foreign birth (Boyd 1984; Raijman and Semyonov 1997; De Jong and Madamba 2001; Rebhun 2010). This work raises an intriguing question: do gendered differences in employment
among immigrants vs. the native born generalize to other country contexts? In this paper, we will investigate the extent to which the double disadvantage exists for immigrant women in a variety of host countries. Using data from IPUMS-International as well as data obtained from census web sites in Australia and Canada, we will examine whether gender differences among immigrants in labor market activity are larger than among native-born populations, and explore if immigrant women are disadvantaged relative to both native-born women and native- and foreign-born men. If doubly disadvantaged, we will then examine how the disadvantage varies by immigrants’ national origins and, for a subset of nations, whether and how it shifts over time.

Authors

• Katharine Donato, Vanderbilt University

• Bhumika Piya, Vanderbilt University