A sizeable turnout greeted Dr. Judith Warner, associate professor of Sociology, as she presented her latest research findings on the subject of immigration policy and its implicit effects on women.
Part of the Food for Thought: Women and Gender Studies Brown Bag Lecture Series, the lecture, held on March 28, presented several key findings-primarily in the area of, what Warner conceptualizes as, “gender skewing.”
According to Warner, “Gender skewing occurs when either the sending country or the host country recruits members of one biological sex more than the other because of immigration recruitment, the gendering of work requirements of a job and the degree to which traditional expectations regarding women’s immigration have changed in a particular sending country.”
In short, Warner’s research aims to examine the question of why certain countries may be exporting more men than women and vice versa and what potential role government immigration policies, gender roles, cultural norms, values or customs may play in affecting the flow of legal immigration, based, specifically, on gender.
Warner cites data, for example, indicating that traditional societies, such as Islamic states, are prone to exporting more men than women (e.g., Egypt exports 144 men per every 100 women, Nigeria – 142 men per every 100 women, Pakistan – 139 men per every 100 women, Bangladesh – 139 men per every 100 women, Guatemala – 130 men per every 100 women and Mexico – 127 men per every 100 women).
The results are markedly different, however, when examining European immigration data, for example, where the trend is, in fact, reversed with more women than men immigrating to the United States (e.g., France exports only 75 men per every 100 women, the United Kingdom exports only 70 men per every 100 women, and Germany exports a mere 58 men per every 100 women).
While the data might seem to suggest that immigration trends might be based purely on the exporting nation’s level of development, Warner cautions against a rush to judgment, citing that less developed nations such as Jamaica – 77 men per every 100 women, Trinidad – 77 men per every 100 women, and Panama – 56 men per every 100 women, are also characterized by equally imbalanced female-to-male immigration ratios.
“…Level of development is not a pure predictor of emigration … Gender skewing itself now has both male and female imbalanced sex ratios,” said Warner.
Regarding unskilled immigrant labor, Warner points out that there, too, gender remains an important consideration, citing that while women’s labor is ordinarily linked to domestic services (e.g., childcare and housekeeping), men’s labor ordinarily encompasses work in agriculture.
According to Warner, such facts are important to consider, especially in the development of government policies such as the Bush Administration’s proposed guest worker program. If such policies contain provisions primarily focused on, for example, the needs of the agricultural labor market, an inherent imbalance in the male-to-female labor ratio will inevitably continue to occur as a result.