Destination of International Female Migrant Workers

Throughout history, migration has been considered an indispensable part of human life. It has occurred due to various reasons, among which searching for new job opportunities has always been a chief one. This happens when workers observe lack of vacancies in their homeland, while there are chances for them in other regions and countries. It impels local workers to move to leave in search of better conditions in their careers, along with having the desire for a better life. However, divergent factors such as demographic change, socio-economic and political crises, and huge wage gaps between developed and developing countries play undeniable roles. Half of these migrants who move across borders for employment are women. Most of these women migrate from Asia especially India, Pakistan and Nepal to developed countries in the world to achieve new opportunities and a better life. The aim of this study is to identify the distribution of international female migrant workers around the world by applying compilation methodology approach, utilizing library documentation method and secondary analysis of qualitative data. The findings indicate that there is a strong connection between gender gap at work and the destination of female migrant workers. Nowadays, Northern, Southern and Western Europe and North America have the least gender gap between women and men at work. These regions are also the main destination of female international migrants. This research also predicts that in the future the destination of these women will be East Asia which is experiencing remarkable gender equality at work.


Introduction
People's migrations have always existed through ages for various reasons.Some ran away from disasters or difficulties, while others were inspired by the desire for a better life (UNFPA & IOM, 2013).
The recent data from the United Nations population Fund-UNFPA-in 2015 estimated that 244 million people, or 3.3 percent of the world's population lived outside their country of region.Almost half of migrants-95 million, are women and girls and most of them are of reproductive age.Millions of these women migrate to developed countries to find work.According to the latest ILO (International Labour Organization) global estimates on migrant workers, in 2013, migrant workers accounted for 150 million of the world's approximately 232 million international migrants.Women are almost half of these worker migrants.Globally speaking, an inordinate number of female migrant workers have been hired in low skill and low status professions (IOM, 2009).Unfortunately, this experience cannot be always safe for migrant workers.Women migrant workers are in a higher danger of human rights violations compared with men migrants.These women have to cope with difficult living and working conditions and a lack of access to social services.They usually have limited or no opportunities to establish a network which can give them enough information and social support.

Review of Female Labour Migration
A great motivator for migrant workers to apply for a job abroad is to support their families in the home country with the possible higher salary.Women are parts of these workers, who are migrating to developed countries to work in a better condition.
The term "migrant worker" refers to all international migrants who are currently employed or are unemployed and seeking employmentin their present country of residence (ILO, 2015).
According to the recent ILO estimates in 2013, there were 150.3 million migrant workers in the world.Among migrant workers, 83.7 million are men and 66.6 million are women, corresponding to 55.7 percent and 44.3 percent of the total respectively.There are two significant questions about female labour migration: 1) Is there any difference between labour force participation rates of female migrants and female non-migrants?
2) How is the global distribution of female workers by economic activity?
The recent report of ILO in 2013 shows that there are two factors for explaining labour force participation rates of migrants and non-migrants.These important factors are sex and income level of countries.
Figure 3 illustrats the global labour force participation rates of migrants and non-migrants by sex in 2013.It can be inferred that overall, labour force participation rates of migrants (72.7 percent) were more than non-migrants (63.9 percent).By considering the sex factor, we can conclude that there was almost no difference between migrant and non-migrant men in respect of their labour force participation rate (78.0 percent versus 77.2 percent), while obviously more migrant women than non-migrant women worked (67.0 percent versus 50.8 percent).In Figure 4, labour force participation rate is based on two factors: sex and income level of countries.In countries with lower-middle, upper-middle and high income, the rates of labour force participation for the migrant population were higher than non-migrant population (except low income countries) in 2013.However, this huge gap did not occur among male workers; for instance, there was no difference between migrant population and non-migrant population in upper-middle income countries.Therefore, the answer of the first question is that labour force participation rates of female migrants are more than female non-migrants.

Male
To answer the second question we should point out that today highly-skilled workers meet the demand in high technology industries, and keep economies globally competitive.At the same time, low-skilled workers fill in the jobs in high demand that local workers do not often tend to undertake but compromise essential work in sectors such as agriculture and industries that include hazardous and difficult tasks.
Table 1 shows that the number of women and men who worked in agriculture, industry and service sections in 2013.It is crystal clear that the number of male workers were more than women in these jobs.Generally, there was a huge gap between services and other economic activities.There is also a simple way to show the Global distribution of migrant workers.Figure 5 is another form of showing the distribution of migrants by broad branches of economic activity.This figure sheds light on the significant concentration of migrant women in occupational service sectors other than agriculture and industries.

Aim
The main purpose of the present study was to investigate the number of female migrant workers around the world and in regions which have the highest number of international female migrant workers.The author also wanted to investigate if there is any connection between female labour migration and gender gap.Eventually, with the help of the data from gender gap and international migration in different areas, she tried to predict the future of the destination of female labour migrants.

Theories of International Labour Migration
There are many theories which can explain the main reasons of international labour migration.The most important of these theories are Neo classical economic theory and labour market segmentation theory.

Neo Classical Economic Theory
This theory is one of the oldest theories of migration.According to this theory, the significant indicator that generates international labour migration is wage differences between countries.Wage differences as a basic economic problem may persist for decades and in this condition labour migrants prefer to migrate to countries with low income inequality.Therefore, we can say that labour flows take place from low-wage to high-wage countries.

Labour Market Segmentation Theory
According to this theory, a labour market is segmented by individual differences such as skills, experiences, formal education and even gender.For instance, men usually earn more money than women while women work more than men.This theory divides the economy into two sections, called the "primary" and "secondary" parts.
The main characteristics of secondary section are: short-time employment relationships, little prospect of internal promotion and the determination of wages by market forces.This section is dedicated to low-skilled labours and the secondary jobs are low-skilled and require little training.Whereas, the primary sector generally contains the higher-grade, higher-status and better paid jobs.Thus, when in a labour market most labours are in the secondary section and most of them do not satisfy workers with the salary and jobs, these workers prefer to migrate and work in a better job condition.

Research Methodology
This research was conducted using library documentation method and secondary analysis of qualitative data related to women and international migration.
Secondary data analysis is the analysis of data that was collected by someone else for another primary purpose.This method is the re-analysis of quantitative data that has already been collected in a previous study by different researcher.
The first step in the process of this study was to develop the research questions.These questions were: 1) Which regions of the world have the highest number of international female migrant workers?
2) Is there any connection between female labour migration and gender gap?
3) Which region will be the first destination of female labour migrants in the future?
After finding the answer to the questions, the author began to learn what was already known and what remained to be learned about female labour migrants.For this purpose, the researcher reviewed the related literature and previously collected data on this topic.Through the literature review, the recent researches and findings were identified.The top ranked surveys in this topic belong to some international organizations.Therefore, this paper is mostly based on the information from United Nations Population Fund (UNPFA), Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), International Labour Organization (ILO) and International Organization for Migration (IOM).
The next step in the process was the evaluation of the dataset to ensure the appropriateness for the research topic.In this step, the researcher could analyze the original dataset to answer the different questions of the study.In fact, for evaluating the dataset, the author had to consider the purpose of the original projects that produced the data because it could influence many factors of the research.After realizing the purpose of the original dataset, it was important to know that who was responsible for collecting information, what information was actually collected and when was the information collected (Johnstone, 2014).In this research the data were collected from three excellent reports of International Labour Organization (ILO).These reports were "ILO global estimates on migrant workers", "Women at work" and "World employment social outlook" which were published by the international organization for work."ILO global estimates on migrant workers" report was published in 2015 and this is about international migrant workers."Women at work" is about gender gap at work in the world in 2016 and "World employment social outlook" is about employment.These reports were published during 2015 to 2016.The last step was managing the primary data.Finally, the author could access to the valuable raw dataset in order to perform new analysis according to her purposes and questions.

Findings
This section is dedicated to the answers of three main questions of the study.Part one shows the distribution of migrant workers by sex and income level of countries.Then in part two, the author will review gender inequality at work around the world.Part three is the answer of the second question of the research.In this part, the destinations of international female labour migrants will be estimated by gender gap.Finally, the last part predicts the future destination of these female migrants.Thus, now more than 74.2 female migrant workers are living in high income countries.But, the main question is if it is true that all 58 high income countries around the world are the first destination of women migrant workers.This question will be answered in the third section of this part, after reviewing the gender gap at work.

Gender Inequality at Work
It is a well-documented fact that women are lagging men in work place equality.Different researches have pegged the time to gender parity at as much as 100 years.However, many countries world wide have made significant progress towards gender equality at work in recent decades.The latest record of ILO in 2016 (Note 1) estimates the development of different regions of the world in gender gap and about labour force participation and pension benefits.
Figure 8 shows that most of the regions of the world, except southern and eastern Asia, experience a better situation in gender gap in labour force participation in 2016 comparing 1990.From this figure we can realize that although in two regions, namely Arab states and North Africa, the gender gap in labour force participation has been reduced until 2016, unfortunately, still there is a huge gap in these regions.In addition, this report mentions that by considering the 5.5 percent unemployment for men and 6.2 for women, female workers are more vulnerable to unemployment.All over the world, except for Eastern Asia, Eastern Europe, and North America, male employment rates are higher than female's, among which North Africa and Arab states bear the highest gender gap in unemployment (ILO, 2016).Note.The gender gap is measured as the difference between women's and men's labour force participation rates.The data cover 178 countries.All data (except this figure) in this study were dedicated to 2013.Our researches have proved that there is no problem to use this figure which is about 2015.Actually, during these 2 years there were not any remarkable differences.
In addition to finding an acceptable job, there is also another important factor which can guarantee the future lives of female workers.This is about pension beneficiaries especially during the retirement times.
Figure 9 is dedicated to actual gender gap in pension beneficiaries in 107 countries.Data are for the latest year available, which ranges from 2008 to 2013.According to this figure, in Eastern Europe there were no differences between men and women in pension beneficiaries.91.6 percent of women benefited from pension beneficiaries during 2008 to 2013.That is a remarkable point of development in this modern world.After this region, North America by 91.5 percent was the best region of the world related to this issue during this time.In North America, there was a slight difference between men and women.Men by 95.2 percent cause a little gap between themselves and female workers.The third region in the world which had a less gender gap in pension beneficiary in 2008 to 2013 was Northern, Southern, and Western Europe by 90.1 percent for women and 96.6 percent for men.Arab states, Southern Asia and Northern Africa were the worst regions in the world considering the issue.Source: Women at Work (Trends 2016), international labour force office-Geneva: ILO, 2016.

Relationship between Female Labour Migration and Gender Gap
Female labour migration has increased in the past two decades.One of the most important reasons of migration among female migrant workers is gender inequalities in job participation and pension benefits.According to the last report of ILO in 2016 "Women at work" and the recent report of this organization about migration "ILO global estimates on migrant workers results and methodology 2015", this part of the study shows that there is a strong and deep connection between gender gap in different parts of the world and the destination of female labour migration.According recent report of ILO, we can realize that in 2013, most of migrant workers lived in Northern, Southern and Western Europe.In other words, this region was the first destination for 26.6 percent of female international workers in the world.There are 24 high income countries in this region.These countries are Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherland, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and United Kingdom.As mentioned in the last part, gender gap in Northern, Southern and western Europe in labour force participation in 2015 was less than 20 percent and this region was the third region which had a less gender gap in pension beneficiaries during 2008 to 2013 (90.1 percent for women and 96.6 percent for men).Therefore, one of these countries was the first destination of female migrant workers in 2013.However, Northern America was the first destination of male migrant workers.
The second region which absorbed female migrant workers in 2013, was North America with 26.3 percent of women, while the Northern, Southern and western Europe with 21.7 percent of men, was the second destination for male migrant workers in 2013.According to ILO report, there are two high income countries in North America; Canada and United states.There was also less gender gap in North America; Less than 20 percent in labour force participation and 91.5 percent for women and 95.2 percent for men in benefiting from pension.Thus, North America was the second destination of most female migrant workers in 2013.
Eastern Europe gained 11.4 percent of female migrants in 2013.After Northern, Southern and Western Europe and Northern America, this region was the third destination of female migrant workers in the world.While the third region that had the most male migrant workers was Arab states.Czech Rep, Hungry, Poland, Russian Federation and Slovakia are high income countries in Eastern Europe.The gender gap in labour force participation was less than 20 percent and this region was the first region which had no gender gap in pension beneficiaries during 2008 to 2013.
The fourth destination of female and male migrant workers in 2013 (7.8 percent), was South-Eastern Asia and the pacific with Australia, Brunei Darussalam, New Zealand and Singapore as high income countries.The gender gap in this area about labour force participation was between 20 and 30 percent (higher 20% and less than 30%).Neither women nor men had a good condition about pension beneficiaries (55.9 percent for women and 57.3 percent for men).
6.0 percent of female migrant workers lived in Central and Western Asia.So, this area was the fifth destination of these women in 2013.However, the fifth destination for male workers was Eastern Europe.Israel and Cyprus are high income courtiers of this region.Gender gap in labour force participation in this region was more than 30 percent (between 30%-40%) but gender equality in pension beneficiaries was satisfactory (86.4 percent for women and 94.4 percent for men).
The next destination for female and male migrant workers was Southern Asia. 5.5 percent of women and 6.0 percent of men workers lived there in 2013.This region has no high income country.There was a huge gender gap in this area in both factors of labour force participation and pension beneficiaries.The gender gap in labour force participation in 2015 was higher than 1995.Also there was a giant gap between male (12 percent) and female (7.4 percent) workers in benefiting from pension during 2008 to 2013.
The seventh destination of female and male workers in the world in 2013 was Sub-Saharan.It has two high income countries; Equatorial Guinea and Reunion.The gender gap in pension beneficiaries was not satisfying but the interesting point is about gender gap in labour force participation.This region, similar to North America, had the lowest gender gap in the world.
Eastern Asia with a number of high income countries was the eighth destination of female migrant workers, while 3.6 percent of male migrant workers lived in Central and Western Asia.Hong Kong China, Japan, Korea.
Rep and Macau China are four high income countries that migrants preferred to go to work there.Gender equality in labour force participation in this region was remarkable like Northern, Southern, Western and Easter Europe with a little difference in comparison with North America and Sub-Saharan which had the best equality in labour force participation.But there was a huge gap between men (86.8 percent) and women (66.0 percent) in pension beneficiaries during 2008 to 2013.
One of the three regions that had the lowest women migrant workers was Arab States.In fact, the main reason that caused this region to have only 4.0 percent of female migrant workers is related to the high gender gap in labour force participation and most of young women even in high income countries of this region are unemployment in 2016.During 2008 to 2013, the gender gap in pension beneficiaries was remarkable.Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates are high income courtiers where female choose to work.
Although, Latin America and the Caribbean has nine countries with high income, it was the second region that had the lowest migrant workers in 2013.Gender gap in labour force participation rates of this region was less than Arab States but this is interesting that migrant workers preferred to go to ArabStates rather than Latin America or the Caribbean.Argentina, Bahamas, Barbados, Chile, Martinique, Puerto Rico, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Bolivarian Rep. are nine high income countries that were the main destination of migrant workers.
Northern Africa without any high income countries is the only region that had less than 1 percent female and male migrant workers.This region, after Arab States had the deepest gender gap in labour force participation.In pension beneficiaries there was an immense gap between men with 63.6 percent and women 8.0 percent.
Therefore, this is not true that all 58 regions with high income in the world are the main destination of international labour migrants.The destination of these women is directly related to gender equality at work condition.For instance, although 6 countries in the Arab region are high income countries, most women migrate from the countries of this region to other countries with higher gender equality at work.The destinations of female migrant workers respectively are shown in Table 2.
Table 2. Destination of migrant workers, by sex

Destination of Women Migrant Workers Destination of Men Migrant Workers
Figures 8 and 9 show that in these regions gender equality is acceptable and the labour force participation rate will reach up to 70 percent.The unemployment rate will be 4 percent, and as a result it can be claimed that the first destination of female migrant workers will be changed from Europe to East Asia.Labour force participation rate of Sub-Saharan Africa will be up to 70 percent along with 7 percent unemployment rate.Figure 8 shows that this region experienced the best rate of gender equality in the world in 2015, but it needs improvement in pension beneficiaries.This is the author's prediction of the future destination of international labour migrants.Maybe the fact will be in contrast of this prediction.

Discussion and Conclusion
The rate of female migration is growing faster than male migration in many countries which absorb high levels of migrants.This trend is commonly referred to as the "Feminization of migration" (Fleury, 2016).Women are increasingly migrating individually and on their own (Nazari & Seyedan, n.d.).Among the divergent factors we can mention searching for job and educational opportunities, escaping the inhibiting unfair treatments and traditions, and also joining the family abroad or merely looking for freedom, respect, and their rights (Caritas, 2012).
In this study, we discussed female labour migration.In the present globalized world, migration of people from one country to another for employment has become a common phenomenon (Saif Ahmad, 2014).Female migrant workers are usually from developing countries in Asia like India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka.Poor economic conditions in these countries along with political instability play a major role in pushing migration (Thimothy & Sasikumar, 2012).According to the latest data from International Labour Organization (ILO), most of these female migrants (26.6%) live in high income countries of Northern, Southern and Western Europe.This region also has the lowest gender gap at work.While, North Africa and Arab states have a huge gender inequality in working conditions.These regions have the least female international migrants comparing others.We can conclude that female migrants prefer to migrate to a country which has a suitable working condition with less gender inequality.In fact, they are searching for a better opportunity to earn money for supporting their families and themselves.According to another trend of ILO in 2017 to 2019, East Asia will be a better place for female labour migrants.The countries of this region are experiencing a remarkable gender equality in recent years.In the future, the labour force participation rates and unemployment rates of countries such as Hong Kong, China, Japan, and Korea.Rep and Macau China will be better than any other countries.Therefore, we can expect that the first destination of female labour migration will be one of the countries of East Asia which has the best conditions for finding a job with a higher salary.With the rapid economic growth in this region, it might be expected to rise even further.
We can conclude that similar to two theories about labour international migration; Neo classical economic theory and labour market segmentation theory, there is a key factor about female labour migration.In Neo classical economic theory, wage differences between countries play a significant role that labour flows take place from law-wage to high-wage countries and in labour market segmentation theory, separating economic into two sections; primary and secondary, causes labour dissatisfaction and decision to migrate to other regions of the world for a better working condition.With the help of the latest report of ILO (2015) the author concludes that the key factor of international female labour migration is gender inequality at work.Female workers prefer to migrate to regions of the world which have a noticeable gender equality at work.
Eventually, sound labour market information is essential for developing well-informed policies.Further work is needed to sharpen the measurement tools used in analyzing women's participation in the labour market.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Global estimates of the number of migrants, migrant workers and migrant domestic workers, 2013 Source: ILO global estimates on migrant workers results and methodology 2015, Geneva.

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Global distribution of migrant workers, by sex, 2013 (percentage) Source: ILO global estimates on migrant workers results and methodology 2015, Geneva.

Figure 3 .
Figure 3. Global labour force participation rates of migrants and non-migrants, by sex, 2013 (percentage) Source: ILO global estimates on migrant workers results and methodology 2015, Geneva.

FemaleFigure 4 .
Figure 4. Labour force participation rates of migrants and non-migrants, by sex and income level of countries, 2013 (percentages) Source: ILO global estimates on migrant workers results and methodology 2015, Geneva.

Figure 5 .
Figure 5. Global distribution of migrant workers by broad branches of economic activity 2013 (percentages) Source: ILO global estimates on migrant workers results and methodology 2015, Geneva.

Figure 10
Figure10makes it clear that 74.2 percent of men and 75.3 percent of female migrant workers lived in high income countries in 2013.12.4 percent of male migrant workers lived in upper-middle countries while more female migrant workers lived in lower-middle countries after high income countries.A less population of women and men migrant workers lived in low income countries in 2013.

Figure 6 .
Figure 6.Migrant workers, by sex and income level of countries 2013 (percentages) Source: ILO global estimates on migrant workers results and methodology 2015, Geneva.

Figure 7 .
Figure 7. Gender gaps in labour force participation rates by region, 1995 and 2015

Figure 8 .
Figure 8. Actual gender gap in pension beneficiaries, 107 countries (latest year available) Note.Global estimates based on 107 countries representing 83 percent of total population above national retirement age, weighted by population above national retirement age.Data are for the latest year available, which ranges from 2008 to 2013.This indicator of coverage is measured as the proportion of the population above the statutory pensionable age receiving an old age or survivor's pension.The asterisk for the Arab States and sub-Saharan Africa regions means that these averages are not representative, as they are based on a limited number of countries (less than 50 percent of the population above national retirement age is represented).

Figure 9 .
Figure 9. Distribution of migrant workers, by sex and broad sub region 2013 (percentage) Source: ILO global estimates on migrant workers results and methodology 2015, Geneva.

Table 1 .
Global distribution of migrant workers, by branch of economic activity and by sex, 2013