HANOI UNIVERSITY OF AGRICULTURE – UNIVERSITY OF LIEGE

Rural development report:

GENDER AND INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION

Name of IMARES participant: Nguyen Duc Trung

Hanoi, 2010
 Nguyen Duc Trung IMARES2

Preface
The first idea of working on gender in rural development came from the
time I work with a Canadian gender specialist. After many field trips to the villages
in Red River delta, I think that gender is one of the emerging problem for the
development of the country in general, and rural area in specific. Despite of the
background in agronomy, I tried to study more and more about the rural sociology
from my supervisors, colleagues, friends and even the farmers. Within the IMARES
program, I have great opportunity to enhance my knowledge, to develop my skills,
and to fill up all the gap of my education background toward rural economic and
sociology aspect. Up to now, I am very satisfied with what I learnt in IMARES
program, such as food economics, value chain, agrarian system, rural sociology,
etc.

This study concentrates in the gender issue in international migration,

specificantly for the rural area. The case studies had been conducted in Cam
Hoang commune will be used to support the analysis of the study. All the case
studies were conducted by IMARES participants. Some interviews have been
conducted by author and colleagues in the time going to field trip in Cam Hoang
for Rural sociology course and have not been used in any other document. For me,
not only the knowledge from Professors, but the experience that the classmates
shared together is also a precious value of the IMARES program.

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Introduction
The total numbers of international migrants have more than doubled in the
last forty years but the percentage of the world population migrating has
remained slightly constant. The number of international migrants worldwide now
is around 175 million equal to approximately 3.5 percent of world population.
About half of whom are women, despite the common misconception that men are
the migrants (Jolly, 2005).

Migration has for a long time been considered to be mainly rural-urban

migration, motivated by men’s search for employment in the industries located in
urban centers (Bock B.B, 2007). Migration affects the household composition and
income, which has gender implications as well. Migration is the strategy for the
rich household to accumulate more capital for investment, while for the poorer,
migration is the way to get the money to pay off debt, even to find a chance to get
more capital to improve their living condition (Long et al, 2000). The rural
migration is also one of the most important concerns for politicians as an
increasingly pressing problem for rural areas. The rural migration out of the rural
areas into the big cities has generally considered as a “natural” consequence of
modernization (Bock B.B, 2000). Bettina explained that migrant studies
traditionally gave a little attention to gender-specific aspects of migration. For
almost all the cases, the avarage migrant was considered to be a man, eventually
followed by wife and children. Women were typically considered as dependants
and passively involved in the migration process.
Because of the globalization process, changing in world labor market
created many opportunities as well as pressure for the women and men who
migrate internationally. In the rural area in developing countries, it is not so
difficult to see some cases that people go to another country to work both as
skilled and unskilled labor (Piper, 2005). In the last two decades, there has seen a
massive flow of rural labors from Vietnam to other countries. Labor export has
been part of official government policies in Vietnam since the 1980s when the

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government started sending workers to Eastern bloc. The country’s labor export
policy is marked by three mains waves. The first and second waves were directed
by Eastern Europe and countries. The third wave started in 1994 with East Asia
becoming the main destination for contract workers. International labor migration
has increased significantly since the late 1990 with East Asia and some Middle East
countries being the major destination of Vietnamese workers. Indeed, labor
migration from Vietnam will probably scale up in the future as trade links between
Vietnam and the South East Asia nations are fully developed. Taiwan, Japan,
Republic of Korea and Malaysia are important importers of Vietnamese workers.
Besides, the oil rich Gulf countries become a potential market for Vietnamese
workers (Thu, Tuan and Huong, 2009).

Concept
Migration Moving internally within countries, or internationally
between countries (from sending to receiving country).
May be a move for the short or long term, for economic,
political or social reasons. May be regular (conforming to
legal requirements) or irregular.
Development As a goal, both economic and social. Includes but is not
limited to poverty reduction. This is as opposed to
programmes, which may contribute to improvements in
well-being or have unintended negative effects, such as
displacing people who wish to stay put.
Gender Gender refers to the differences and commonalities
between women and men which are set by convention and
other social, economic, political and cultural forces.
Gender The systematic, unfavorable treatment of individuals on
discrimination the basis of their gender, which denies them rights,
opportunities or resources.

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Sex – segregated The gender division of labor consists of the socially

labour market determined ideas and practices that define what roles and
activities are deemed appropriate for women and men.
This in turn can lead to a sex-segregated labor market
where men are recruited into certain types of jobs and
women into others.
Source: Jolly, 2005

International migration by gender

Table 1: Percentage of female migrants among the total number of international
migrants, by major areas, 1960 – 2000
Major area 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000
World 46.6 47.2 47.4 47.9 48.8
More developed regions 47.9 48.2 49.4 50.8 50.9
Less developed regions 45.7 46.3 45.5 44.7 45.7
Europe 48.5 48.0 48.5 51.7 52.4
Northern America 49.8 51.1 52.6 51.0 51.0
Oceania 44.4 46.5 47.9 49.1 50.5
Northern Africa 49.6 47.7 45.8 44.9 42.8
Sub-Saharan Africa 40.6 42.1 43.8 46.0 47.2
Southern Asia 46.3 46.9 45.9 44.4 44.4
Eastern and South-eastern Asia 46.1 47.6 47.0 48.5 50.1
Western Asia 45.2 46.6 47.2 47.9 48.3
Carribean 45.3 46.1 46.5 47.7 48.9
Latin America 44.7 46.9 48.4 50.2 50.5

Source: Piper N., 2005

Some researches worldwide show that in the last four decades, the number
of female migrants reached almost the same as male migrants (Piper, 2005). The

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table 1 reveals the information that up to year 1960, among 100 international
migrants there are nearly 47 women. This figure increases steadly to year 2000,
where the percentage of female international migrants is 48.8 percent. Another
interesting thing is the percentage of women left their countries of birth from the
less developed regions always higher than from the more developed regions.
The situation in small rural area seems fairly similar to the world picture.
Thu, Tuan and Huong have conducted a research in international migration in this
commune in 2009 but there was no information on the migrants disaggregated by
gender. It could create some confusing in understanding the situation. Dong and
his colleagues continued to study more in this field with the scope of gender
equality and found that there is an interesting fact in Phi Xa village where the
number of female and male workers worked or working abroad in total is equal
and almost all of them have been going abroad for working in the industrial zone.

Table 2: Internation migration situation in Phi Xa village

Staying abroad Returned Total
Total 51 16 67
Male 30 3 33
Female 21 13 34
Source: Dong et al, 2010
The main reason is there are many companies hired labors in Cam Hoang
commune, and they worked in many type of industry. There is still labor sex –
segregated in this area, for example mechanical, carpenter, construction worker
are mostly for men, while electronic, textile & garment, food industry are mostly
for women (Dong et al, 2010). According to table 2, the people returned from
foreign countries are mostly women. The chief of village explained that the female
workers want to stay in the village after returning to take care their children, while
their counterpart want to continue working in foreign country to earn money for
their family. There are some cases that the male workers go abroad for working

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again after they returned to Phi Xa village, motivated by their wives (Dong et al,
2010). In this village, there are still some cases that the wife has to follow her
husband to go abroad, and in all the cases the couples work as free traders, not as
engineer or worker in any industrial zone.

Gendered causes of international migration

Jolly claimed that most decisions are made in reponse to a combination of
economic, social and political pressures and incentives. Capital accumulation is
one of the most popular reasons of migrants, followed by the reason of family
reunification or to escape from the gender inequality situation. The reality shows
the problems in classifying the reason of migration as “forced” or “voluntary”. For
the case in Cam Hoang commune, it seem to be there is no “forced” migrants,
where all the migrants both men and women have the right to decide or to
participate in the decision making of migration inside the households, and the
main reason is searching for new source of income (Thu, Tuan, Huong, 2009; Dong
et al, 2010). Migration may be the only and the most appropriate way for women
to face poverty of the family. The remittance – the money earned or acquired by
immigrants that is sent back home to the home countries – is the popular desire of
the migrants and even the people who are left inside the family (Jolly, 2005).
While family reunification (right to migrate to join other family members in the
destination country) is possible, generally the women are likely to migrate to join
or accompany with their spouse or because of marriage (Jolly, 2005; Dong et al,
2010). For the international migrants go abroad to work in some industrial zone, it
is rarely to see the case that the spouse migrate to the same country with the
workers to accompany with them. However, the free trader (mostly men) usually
let his wife join him after some years doing business, when he thinks he can cover
his family expenditure in another country (Dong et al, 2010).

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International migrations and gender relations

Migration mean the people let their family stay inside the village, and it
also mean there is an “empty seat in the diner table”. The absence of one spouse
may leave the other ones with both greated decision-making power and a greater
burden of reponsibility and labor (Jolly, 2005; Dong et al, 2010).
The housework that women have to do daily covers from, meal
preparation, washing clothes, cleaning garden, coops, and pigpens and taking care
of grandchildren (if yes). Some time the women may suffer from the added work
burden or transfer this to younger girls who have to assume more responsibilities
(Jolly, 2005; Tri et al, 2010). In terms of characteristics, most of housework is not
so hard but often done during the time other groups spend for relax (Tri et al,
2010). The study of Dong and his colleagues show the information about the
changes in housework, and it seems similar in comparison between the family
with the husband working abroad and family with the wife abroad. It means that
while a man or a woman working abroad, his/ her partner has to implement all
the housework. In general, the houseworks are usually implemented by women,
the wife or the mother in a family. The absence of the men inside the household
do not cause many change to the housework. Meanwhile, there is a dramatical
change in the life of the men when his wife working abroad. Because of a long
time without doing housework, it was so difficult while the men have to be
switched from the beneficiaries to the implementers. In some cases, children may
be left behind the mothers migrating internationally, and sometimes fathers take
on new gender roles and look after their children (Jolly, 2005). Thing would be a
little easier for the family with teenager children, who could help their fathers
(Dong et al, 2010).
The paragraph above discussed about the change in housework, which
usually identified as the “heavenly made mandate” of the women. However, there
are some differences in fieldwork, which shared by every active member of the
family. For long time, among the fieldworks, hard work like land preparation,

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harvesting, transporting are understood as the work specialized for men; while
seeding, planting, harvesting are specialized for women. For the wives with
husband working in the industrial zone nearby, thing could be easier because they
could ask for some day off and come back to the village to help their family. But
the situation would change dramatically while one member of the family working
abroad (Dong et al, 2010). As said before, along with the added work burden, the
women also have the greater decision making power. In many cases, the wife
decided to rent extra labor to help her for the hard work, which used to be done
by her husband.

Table 3: Change in the way of work sharing

No. Past Current
1 Housework
1.1 Cooking by traditional stove using Cooking by electric rice cooker and/or
straw and wood gas stove
1.2 Taking water from the well by Using pumping machine to take water
hand pull from the well
1.3 Little participation of men More participation of men
2 Fieldwork
2.1 Preparing paddy field manually Using tractors to prepare the field
2.2 Transplanting in summer – Sowing in summer – autumn rice crop
autumn rice crop
2.3 Manually weeding Using herbicides
2.4 Using wagon or shoulder balance Using motorbikes and small trucks for
to carry inputs and products transportation of inputs and products
2.5 Working seasonally in the field Working all year round in the
industrial zones
2.6 Grass cutting for fish feeding Using industrial feed for fish feeding

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2.7 Working everyday Having weekend

2.8 New tasks for some groups of women
(looking after grandchildren, house
cleaning, etc.)
Source: Tri et al, 2010
Table 3 can show us the change in the way that women implement their
housework and fieldwork along with the change of technical advantage, social-
economic condition and change in the behavior of men. Inspite of implementing
all the work manually and time consumming way in the past, women now with the
remittances from the migrated husband have more choice to support their
everyday work.

The development impacts

The linkages between development and migration have received increasing
attention by international institution and donor agencies (Piper, 2005). Migration
has the potential to challenge and support the achievement of the Millenium
Development Goals (MDGs) at the same time (Jolly, 2005).
The development effect can be presented in both for sending societies and
migrants themselves, and in both positive and negative way. Firstly, for the
sending societies, it is not very difficult to recognize that international migration
could help the society develop more in economical term. In Cam Hoang commune,
almost all the big and concrete houses were built by the families which have
international migrants (Thu, Tuan, Huong, 2009; Dong et al, 2010). With the
remittances, some households can invest more on agriculture activities, to be
more intensification. While some other households decide to invest their capital
into service area, try to find a way out of agriculrual sector. Some migrants
returned back to the village with the new technology, skills and it would be better
if they can share or contribute their experience for the community devlopment.

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Beside the postive impacts, the negative impacts to society include increasing the
level of gender inequality, gender discrimination, bad affect to the family
relationship come from the rumors about the moral activities of the women who
migrated (Thu, Tuan, Huong, 2009). In term of the migrants, the first impact is that
they can improve the living condition, reponse to the poverty, invest more into
their production. Mostly the situation of work sharing would switch to “normal”
again after the husband or the wife return to the village. It means that, the
women have to implement all the housework, both when their husband was
absent or not, but the share in decision making power changed also, especially in
the family with the wife returned from foregin country (Dong et al, 2010). Lack of
care inside the family is another impact which leads to some social problem in
household level and generally in community level. The situation is more serious in
some families with the children are now in the education age. Almost all the
mothers concern about the education of their children, they feel nervous about
the changes of social conditions, about the social evils come from the urban area
(Dong et al, 2010).

Conclusion
There is increased awareness of the important role that gender plays in
international migration. This reflects the increased proportion of migrant women
in all categories alongside increased recognition by scholars and policymakers
alike that their experience of migration differs from that of men (Piper, 2005).

International migration is now an emerging situation in many rural areas,

espcecially in developing countries. The main reason of migration is income
generating. Gender issue is now not very strange to researchers both economics
and sociology. However, there is a clear lack of research on the impact of
migration on broader social development and gender equality. In fact over the last
25 years there has been little concerted effort to intergrate gender into the
theories of international migration (Jolly, 2005).
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REFERENCES

Bock, B.B, 2007, Gender and Migration: An overview, Rural Gender relations –
Issues and Case studies
Dong, Phoumsaydavone, Phuong and Trung, 2010, Gender issue in International
migration, Rural sociology field trip report, IMARES 2
Jolly S. and Hazel R., 2005, Gender and migration – Overview report, BRIDGE
Cutting Edge Packs
Long D. Lynellyn, Hung, Truitt, Mai and Anh, 2000, Changing gender relations in
Vietnam’s post Doi Moi era, Policy research report on Gender and
Development
Piper N, 2005, Gender and Migration, A paper prepared for the Policy Analysis and
Research Programme of the Global Commission on International Migration
Thu, Tuan and Huong, 2009, The main factors effecting on the international
migration of rural families, Rural sociology field trip report, IMARES 1
Tri, Chi, Phuong and Chandokham, 2010, Time allocation of women in Phuong
Hoang village, Cam Hoang commune, Rural sociology field trip report, IMARES
2

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