Why migrant women need equality, empowerment
Becoming a migrant is an increasingly common life and professional choice for women in Asia. According to the United Nations’ Department of Economic and Social Affairs, women now account for 42% of the total number of migrants in the region.
Popular destinations for female temporary labour migrants originating from Asia include the oil-rich Gulf countries and the fast-growing economies in Southeast Asia.
More women are also migrating to developed nations in East Asia, Europe and North America to meet growing demand for their labour, particularly in the healthcare sector.
Others, many of them over-qualified, have found jobs as domestic workers, carers for children and the elderly or factory workers, notably in the textile and fish processing sectors.
Many of these women are the primary “breadwinners” for their families back home and have made the agonising choice to leave their children and families behind to earn their living abroad.
Remittances from these women generate significant cash revenues for many of the labour-sending countries of Asia.
But, as a key theme of International Women’s Day on March 8 observes, globalisation and technology are changing “the world of work” and many migrant women are being left behind.
The theme: “Empowering Women in the Changing World of Work” is timely given the benefits in terms of convenience, efficiency and comfort that most of us enjoy from innovation at home and at work.
But for many migrant women in lowskilled jobs abroad with little or no social protection, technological advances are currently more of a threat than an opportunity. At any point they may find themselves competing with automation for their livelihood.
Factories and businesses around the world invariably weigh the cost of technology against the cost of a cheap labour from developing countries. When they decide to instal new technologies, female migrants — the most vulnerable and the cheapest to fire — are usually the first to be laid off.
We cannot roll back innovation and technological advance. So the solution must begin in the country of origin and involve greater access to relevant education and training.
We must provide career development opportunities to women who currently cannot access them.
Better education and training alone are, of course, no panacea. Women with higher skills often work in less skilled professions when they migrate. For instance, many nurses can work as caregivers, but not nurses in destination countries. Women with teaching qualification often work as housekeepers when they migrate.
Female migrants are now trapped in a supply chain cul de sac where they have to assume manual tasks. They are not given opportunities to familiarise themselves with technologies and therefore cannot advance themselves. These women are stuck and, as automation increases, their livelihood opportunities will shrink.
We therefore need to maximise the migration experience of women long before they get on a bus, a train, a boat or a plane. To empower women migrants, they must be given the same opportunities as men to access relevant training, skills and career development.
The 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) contain important gender dimensions which must be reflected in policy and practice in migrant-sending countries, and respected in migrant-receiving ones.
We need gender-specific interventions to promote women’s access to technology and “the changing world of work”. These must offer women not just more dignified migration opportunities in destination countries, but also better access to education, health and justice in their countries of origin.
We need to maximise the migration experience of women long before they get on a bus, a boat or a plane.