Gender and Development IN BRIEF

BRIDGE BULLETIN – ISSUE 16 – SEPTEMBER 2005

Gender and Migration

In this issue:

· Gender and migration: an overview

· Promoting the rights of women migrating from Asia to the Middle East

· Want to know about trafficking? Ask any sex worker

Over the past four decades total numbers of international migrants have more than doubled but the percentage of the world population migrating has remained fairly constant. There are now 175 million international migrants worldwide or approximately 3.5 per cent of the global population –about half of whom are women. Yet internal migration in India and China combined exceeds total international migration globally. Is migration positive or negative for both gender equality and development? In fact it can be both. How can policy and practice foster the positive potential of migration and mitigate the risks? This In Brief hopes to inspire thinking on this question – with a short overview of the connections between gender and migration, an article on UNIFEM’s work changing policies and supporting the rights of women migrating from Asia to the Middle East and a piece from the Durbar sex worker collective challenging us to re-evaluate work on trafficking.

Gender and migration: an overview

BRIDGE

In 2000, 1 in every 35 people was an international migrant; and what some may find more surprising is the fact that half of these are now women. For internal migration, the total numbers are even higher (IOM 2000). Nevertheless, little progress has yet been made by development cooperation agencies on mainstreaming gender into migration interventions, and research into the gendered nature of migration has yet to hit the development headlines.

People’s experiences of gender are central to the patterns, causes and impacts of migration. Gender roles, relations and inequalities affect who migrates, how, why, and where they end up. Consider the following two examples:

‘While working in Hong Kong I experienced many things – the way people treat a dependent or independent woman. I have gained much experience and my confidence has grown. Now, I have a say in decision-making at home. My husband does not shout at me. I have bought a piece of land and four rickshaws and I am creating a means of livelihood for four other families…’ Sushila Rai, Nepalese migrant domestic worker (UNIFEM 2004 section 2, p1).

‘I can’t believe I did it. If I had someone to talk my problems over with, this would not have happened’ twenty-one-year-old Leonor Dacular, is reported to have said this to a Philippines embassy official in a prison cell in Saudi Arabia as she awaited execution. She had complained to her employers that she had been raped twice by their sixteen-year-old son but they did not seem to care. She finally killed the son and his parents in their sleep and tried to kill herself. She was executed on 7 May 1993 (UNIFEM 2004 section 2, p4).

Gender and migration connections

Looking at migration through the lens of gender can show us how futile it is to try to divide up experiences of migration as either forced or voluntary, positive or negative, empowering or restrictive. Real-life stories of migration might include a family from Niger faced with famine moving for survival; a daughter in the Philippines sent by her family to work as a maid and required to send her earnings back home; a Bangladeshi woman divorced by her husband who is sent back to her parents’ village; a woman fleeing feared violence from the militia to a displaced people’s camp in Darfur; an English boy who runs away from home to escape sexual abuse; a transgender adolescent in Brazil thrown out by his family moving to the nearest city to seek out a transgender community; or a Serbian woman who has willingly migrated for sex work, but has been deceived into believing that she will earn good money rather than be trapped in conditions of virtual slavery.

Do gender roles stay as they were when people were “at home”, or do they change? What employment opportunities are open to which genders? What specific needs or vulnerabilities may women face when coping with new countries or communities?

It is true that migration can lead to a greater degree of economic and/or social autonomy for women, and the opportunity of challenging traditional or restrictive gender roles. Through migration, both men and women may develop skills or earn higher wages, some of which they can send back to their country of origin as remittances. However, migration can also entrench restrictive gender stereotypes of women’s dependency and lack of decision-making power. The gendered division of labour in destination societies may result in women’s skills being under-utilised, or lead women into sex work or domestic service, even if they had no intention of doing so on departure. In addition, services such as health, education and employment protection may be hard to obtain in destination countries, particularly if you are in informal (or indeed illegal) employment. Such service deficits can be particularly acute for women if they are unused to negotiating their rights to help when they need it, or if they face barriers of language and isolation.

Gender, migration and development

Despite the absence hitherto of development policy around migration, agencies like DFID are increasingly seeing it as a potentially important livelihood strategy for poor women and men – and one which can provide development to both sending and receiving countries. And yet, if both women and men are to benefit from migration, a shift to a gendered human rights approach is needed which ensures that development policy and practice are not limited to the economic aspects of migration (remittances or diasporic investment for example), but that they address a broader development “picture” which includes culture, human rights and equality. This requires a much closer look at factors such as invisibility, lack of protection, illegal status, poor labour standards, violence and stigma. Such factors are critically gendered in terms of the different needs of men and women in relation to health, employment, resources, information, and power over decision-making.

There are currently some positive examples that we can learn from. Government initiatives like that in Sri Lanka can provide essential pre-departure training to both women and men migrants which ensure a firm footing for all on arrival. Bilateral agreements between sending and receiving areas can also prompt receiving countries to provide a better deal for women migrants, as well as formulating policies to respond to large numbers of skilled workers leaving their countries of origin (the so-called “brain drain”). A project of UNIFEM South East Asia is currently facilitating the establishment of a Memorandum of Understanding between Jordan and Indonesia and between Jordan and the Philippines that outlines the rights of women migrant workers. Important work can also be done by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) such as ALMATERRA in Turin, Italy which provides legal support, information, cross-cultural mediation, childcare and skills training for migrant women (Lean Lim et al. 2003).

International rights frameworks on migration, refugees, women’s human rights and trafficking are an important starting point and direction for the mobilisation of resources and efforts within government and civil society. At the end of the day, people’s rights to health, education and information are inalienable. Access to and enjoyment of these rights requires an acknowledgement by policymakers and practitioners of the migration context. What (or who) has made someone migrate, where they find themselves, and whether they are in physical danger or isolation, will all partly depend on whether that someone is male or female. Gender affects how people are able to contribute to and benefit from their destination community – and how, therefore, they are able to ultimately play a part in achieving basic goals of both social and economic development.

Promoting the Rights of Women Migrating from Asia to the Middle East

MEENAKSHI AHLUWALIA, UNIFEM South Asia

‘When I was migrating to work as a domestic helper, I was told that I needed the permission of male guardian to apply for migration. Even after obtaining the official permission, I had to cover my face and leave after sunset … When my brother migrated, everyone put red tilak on his forehead and bade him farewell. Now that I am back the discrimination continues, I am looked down upon while he is respected as a seasoned person’ Nepali migrant worker migrating to Hong Kong. After her story was told in UNIFEM’s briefing kit on empowering migrant workers (2004) she commented, ‘My story was featured as a success story. Ever since, people approach me for information on foreign employment. Today I feel that I and my work have been respected.’

Around half of those migrating within and from Asia are women, the majority of whom are concentrated in low-end stereotypical jobs such as domestic help and entertainment, often as irregular migrants. In Indonesia, irregular migrants may outstrip regular migrants by seven to one. Treating these women as victims will not help them. Instead what is needed is an empowering and rights-based approach which respects their choices, and challenges the policies and prejudices in sending and receiving countries which make their lives more difficult. Examples of UNIFEM South Asia’s work to strengthen women migrants’ rights are described below.

Sending countries – Nepal

In many sending countries, negative ideas are associated with female migration. In Nepal, UNIFEM organised a media campaign to dispel these and promote the idea of a woman’s right to livelihood and mobility as part of her human rights. The campaign included articles in leading newspapers, radio programmes, panel discussions and spots on television. ‘The Media campaign attracted the attention of Social Justice Committee (SJC) of the Parliament and compelled us to create pressure on the Ministry of Labour to lift the ban on women going for work in the Gulf’, remarked the Honourable Ambika Pant, President of SJC and Member of Parliament. The Government has now lifted the ban on female formal sector workers migrating to Gulf countries and the Foreign Employment Act has been amended to incorporate the rights of Nepali female migrant workers.

Receiving countries – Jordan

There are an estimated 35,000 Sri Lankans and 7,000 Filipinos working in Jordan (according to the relevant embassies). Domestic workers in the Middle East mostly lack labour rights or protection from abuse. In Jordan, UNIFEM has facilitated efforts by the Ministry of Labour and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to develop the ground-breaking Minimum Standard Contract for Migrant Domestic Workers introduced in 2003. This contract recognises domestic work as productive labour and domestic workers as workers with legally recognised and enforceable rights. It covers migrant workers’ rights to life insurance, medical care, rest days, timely payment of wages and the right to be treated in a humane way in keeping with international human rights standards.

Cooperation between sending and receiving countries

For sustained improvement in migrants’ lives and to maximise the positive impacts on people’s livelihoods and women’s empowerment, sending and receiving countries need to work together. To this end, UNIFEM has been supporting cross-regional learning and cooperation both within and between countries through exposure visits and regional conferences. In a recent regional workshop, commitment was gained for multi-stakeholder collaboration within and between countries of origin to protect workers’ rights – from governments, NGOs and international organisations in Indonesia, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Jordan, Nepal, Philippines and Sri Lanka.

UNIFEM hopes that in the longer run, both sending and receiving countries, governments and civil society, will collaborate to promote safe migration, and evolve gender- and rights-based policies and programmes which empower migrant workers.

Meenakshi Ahluwalia is Program Officer on Economic Security and Rights for UNIFEM South Asia Regional Office.

223 Jor Bagh, New Delhi-11003, India

Tel: 91-11- 24604351/24649752/24649165

Fax: 91-11- 24627612

Email:

[POSTER ILLUSTRATIONS:

poster3 productive.pdf

poster4 from victim to empowered.pdf

Caption: Posters from UNIFEM East and Southeast Asia Empowering Women Migrant Workers Programme

Andrew – can you use both, if not use the poster4 from victim to empowered.pdf one - thanks]

Want to know about trafficking? Ask any sex worker

NANDINEE BANDYOPADHYAY, Associate Director, Inter-Act, PATH India, and advisor for Durbar, a collective of 60,000 female, male and transgender sex workers

[insert photo somewhere – act_0.gif – if you can take out the ‘cultural activities by sex workers bit of the image that would be great]

Caption: Durbar projects include sexual health, networking, literacy and cultural activities.

My friend Bahar, who has worked as a sex worker in Mumbai and in different parts of Calcutta says, ‘Ask any sex worker, what is the question that she encounters most frequently from outsiders, and she will invariably tell you, – “how did you come into the sex trade?” And you know why, because all you pious do-gooders cannot bring yourself to believe or accept that anyone can be a sex worker willingly – you want to hear a story that she had been forced into sex work, – blindfolded, gagged and dragged, just like in Hindi films, … what is the word you use these days, ah yes, “trafficked”.’

I interject hesitantly, ‘But do not most sex workers say that is exactly how they were introduced into sex work?’ Bahar laughs, ‘We sex workers are in the business of meeting our clients’ demands, be they men wanting sexual gratification or social workers like you wanting to save us. So we supply what you demand – you want spectacular, gory, heart-wrenching stories – we give them to you.’

‘Here you have a trade – be it brothel-based or more unorganised street-based sex work – where the workers have the least bargaining power compared to those who profit from them. Of course the controllers of the trade would try to get workers who they can exploit most easily and profitably.’ Bahar explains, ‘See, most of us come from very poor households, where we have had little education or training in marketable skills, not much opportunity to live a life we would like to. Take my case, I left home because I felt I was not loved enough – my brothers always got the lion’s share of food, toys or parents’ love. So I ran away with the first boyfriend I had – and landed up in Bombay. It was this boyfriend who took me to a brothel-manager – and of course he made a small profit out of the transaction, like any agent supplying goods would do. So I was “trafficked” into the sex trade. But I knew what I was getting into, and there did not seem much point in protesting as by that time I had realised that the boyfriend was weak-willed and penniless on top of it.

‘The first few months were grim – no choice over anything then – over which client to take, what fees to charge – that was “trafficking” according to me – when I had no control over my life. But after a year, I managed to strike a deal with the brothel-manager where I could keep half of what I earned and had complete control over my movements. At that point I could have left sex work, gone back home – not that they would have taken me back, tainted as I was by then – but I stayed on.

‘The only way you can stop trafficking is to make it unprofitable for employers to recruit trafficked labour. Ensure all brothel owners and managers abide by norms barring them from recruiting trafficked sex workers. You “rescuers” never consult sex workers to find out what they want, you violate our rights by evicting us from our homes and workplaces, often insult and physically abuse us during the raid and then imprison us in remand homes for destitutes and delinquents. Ensure that sex workers, or any worker in any industry for that matter, have a degree of control over our working conditions and terms of engagement.’ As with most of my encounters with Bahar, I have no choice but to accept the wisdom of her words.