Gender inequality and emigration: Push factor or selection process?

Our objective in this research is to provide empirical evidence relating to the linkages between gender equality and international emigration. Two theoretical hypotheses can be made for the purpose of analyzing such linkages. The first is that gender inequality in origin countries could be a push factor for women. The second one is that gender inequality may create a “gender bias” in the selection of migrants within a household or a community. An improvement of gender equality would then increase female migration. We build several original indices of gender equality using principal component analysis. Our empirical results show that the push factor hypothesis is clearly rejected. All else held constant, improving gender equality in the labor market is positively correlated with the migration of women, especially of the high-skilled. We observe the opposite effect for low-skilled men. This result is robust to several specifications and to various measurements of gender equality.