From this section on "Gender and Remittances", INSTRAW is joining the current debate on the development impact of international migrations, opening up a space for the analysis of the interrelation among gender, migration, remittances and development.

This section provides information on the INSTRAW's activities aimed at integrating gender into the studies and project related to remittances, as well as a fact sheet on remittances and migration, a glossary, an annotated bibliography, a directory of organizations and other resources.

Why Gender and Remittances? 

• In the last decade, remittances have emerged as the second largest source of external funding for developing countries;
  
  

• Current international migrations are characterized by the increasing presence of women who migrate as the main economic providers;
  
  

• Little is known about gender differences in the sending patterns and use of remittances; the contribution of migrant women to local development in their countries of origin; and how the migration of women as bread-winners is producing changes in gender roles in households and communities;
  
  

• INSTRAW is convicted that the development potential of remittances cannot be adequately analyzed without taking into account the fact that the sex/gender system, as division establishing differences and inequalities between men and women, operate at all levels of society. 
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Fact Sheet   http://www.un-instraw.org/en/index.php?option=content&task=blogcategory&id=76&Itemid=110 In 2002 some 175 million people - 2.3% of the world population- lived outside their country of birth. This figure includes displaced people and refugees, but does not include irregular migration flows. International Migration 2002… The total number of migrants has grown consistently in the last decades. In 1965 there were 75 million international migrants. Ten years later, in 1975, the numbers were 84 million and by 1985, the number had increased to 105 million. The tendency indicates that migration flows will continue to grow. IOM -World Migration 2003… Sixty percent of migrants reside in developing countries. The countries hosting the greatest number of immigrants are: United States, Russia, Germany, Ukraine, France, India, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Australia and Pakistan. The countries with the greatest proportion of migrants in their total population are: United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Jordan, Israel, Singapore, Oman, Estonia, Saudi Arabia, Latvia and Switzerland. International Migration 2002 … According to United Nations estimates, between 1970 and 1995, the main countries of origin of emigration flows were: Mexico, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Kazajstan, Vietnam, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Colombia and Bosnia. International Migration 2002 … The expression “illegal migrant” should not be used. It contradicts the spirit and violates directly the words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which clearly states in Article 6 that “Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law”. The preferred term is “undocumented migrant”. UNHCHR… Given the nature of irregular migration, no exact figures exist that reflect the magnitude of this migratory flow. Estimates indicate that it could represent between a third to one half of the new entries in the developed countries, assuming an increase of 20% in the last 10 years. IOM-World Migration 2003… Some 40% of developed and developing countries worldwide, implement policies directed to reducing immigration. Twenty-five years ago, only 6% of countries worldwide practiced these policies. IOM -World Migration 2003… Up until the 1970s, the majority of studies on international migration focused explicitly on male migrants or implicitly assumed that the majority of the migrant people were men. These suppositions were not based on empirical evidence, since, both then and now, the majority of data on international migration are not classified by sex. The first combination of sex-disaggregated data, with estimates for the period 1965-1990, was elaborated by the United Nations Population Division in 1998. The global Dimension of Female Migration… Estimates indicate that since 1960, thus for more than 40 years, female migrants have been nearly as numerous as male migrants. Already in 1960 women nearly comprised 47% of people living outside their country of origin. Since then, the proportion of female migrants has grown consistently, reaching 48% in 1990 and nearly 49% in 2000. IOM -World Migration 2003… The main gender difference in the migratory phenomenon, with respect to previous decades, is the change in the economic role of migrant women. Women move more autonomously to incorporate themselves in the labour market of the countries of destination, and not only as dependents of male migrants. IOM -World Migration 2003… In 1986, female migrant workers from Sri Lanka represented 33% of the workforce abroad. In 1990, Sri Lankan women represented 65% of the migrant population working abroad. Whrnet… The position of female migrant workers in the countries of destination is characterized by its concentration in a very reduced number of typically female occupations such as: domestic and care-giving work, sexual work and in the services sector. These are precarious jobs that are characterized by low salaries, absence of social service provision and poor employment conditions. DAW… Normally, female migrants face greater unemployment rates than native female workers and earn wages well below male migrant workers and native female workers. According to the 2002 Census of the United States, 31% of female migrant headed-households are poor, compared with 15% of households headed by male migrants. Immigrant women… To give an idea of the magnitude of female migrants working as domestic workers here are some figures: 72% of Indonesia’s labour migration is formed by women who work in the domestic service area abroad. In Italy, 50% of domestic workers are citizens from non-European Union countries and in France, more than 50% of migrant women work as domestic workers. RESPECT… Migrant use multiple channels to send money back to their country of origin. In some cases they use formal channels such as banks, post offices or remittance companies. In other cases they use informal systems, carry the money themselves, or send it through other people travelling back to the country of origin. This wide range of money-transfer channels makes it increasingly difficult to measure the exact flow of remittances taking place. Remittance-related data, therefore, are only approximate values, and the figures provided by the main sources of statistics (the international financial organizations) tend to be inconsistent. As an example, the volume of remittances reported by the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) for 2002 was considerably greater than the volume reported by the World Bank. World Bank… and IADB… At the global level, remittance flows have grown by 32% between 1995 and 2001. It is unknown how much of this increase can be explained by the growth of remittances or by an increase in the proportion moving through formal channels. According to IADB estimates, remittances towards Latin America have grown by 17.6% in the year 2002. IADB MIF FOMIN… Latin America and the Caribbean is the region that receives more remittances than any other, with 31% of total remittance flows in 2002. Countries in South Asia receive 20%; North Africa and the Middle East receive 18%; East Asia and the Pacific 14%, Europe and Central Asia 13% and South Africa 5 %. IADB MIF… The countries that received the largest volume of remittances in 2001 were India, Mexico, Turkey, Egypt, Portugal, Morocco, Bangladesh, Jordan and El Salvador. World Bank... Female migrants contribute significantly to the economy of their countries of origin through their remittances. In Sri Lanka, they contributed more than 62% of the total of the 1 billion USD in private remittances in 1999, which represented 50% of the trade balance and 145% of foreign credits and loans. IOM-World Migration 2003… Remittances represent an important source of income, especially in the weakest economies, and contribute considerably to the GNP. In 2000, remittances sent by migrants to El Salvador, Eritrea, Jamaica, Jordan, Nicaragua and Yemen increased the GNP of these countries by more than 10%. World Bank... Some developing countries receive more remittances than development aid. Three groups of countries can be differentiated according to their dependency with respect to remittances, aid or private capital flows: Dominican Republic, El Salvador and Sri Lanka mainly depend on remittances; the majority of the sub-Saharan countries strongly depend on aid; while other countries such as Colombo, Indonesia, Mexico and Peru depend more on private capital flows. Remittances and other… Measurements carried out in different countries on the volume of unrecorded remittances, between the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1990s, indicate that the value of unofficial remittances can represent between 8 and 85 per cent of the total remittances in the country, the average being 36%. A 1993 questionnaire carried out in the Philippines, reveals that out of total remittances to the Philippines, cash brought home was found to constitute 35 per cent and in-kind transfers seven per cent, i.e. at least 42 per cent of total flows eluded recording in the official statistics. Remittances and other… Studies show that 42% of adult migrants, of Latin origin, send remittances to their families in the country of origin, regularly. Seventy percent of the people use remittance companies to send the money, 11% use banks and 17% use informal methods such as the postal service or people hand-delivering the money. The studies point out how remittance flows were not affected by the economic crises of 2001-2002 in the United States. Remittances tracking… Studies also highlight that the majority of the people receiving remittances in Latin America are women; although they do not include sex disaggregated data of migrants sending remittances. Remittances tracking… One of the few studies that analyzes the dispatching of remittances from a gender perspective reached the conclusion that Dominican women migrants send more remittances to their families than Dominican male migrants. In sum, 55.1% of remittances received by the people surveyed in the study were sent by women, while 44.9% had been sent by male migrants. IFAD... The average remittance delivery of Latin-American migrants in the United States is of 200 USD, eight or more times per year. Taking into account the average annual income of a migrant in the United States of 25,000 USD, remittances can represent up to 10% of their income. IFAD... The cost of sending money home varies considerably according to the country and method employed, and could represent a significant loss for the migrant and his/her family. For instance, the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) estimated that in 2002, the total cost of sending remittances to Latin America and the Caribbean represented some 12.5% of the total value of the remittances in the region. IADB... People who receive remittances tend to dedicate them principally to their basic consumption and social capital investment such as: food, household, health and education (more than 75% in Mexico, Nicaragua and El Salvador, for example). Remittances tracking… Remittances have become an alternative safety-net to the welfare-state. According to the World Bank, a 10% increase in the percentage of remittances to a country's GDP would result in a 1.6% reduction in the number of people living under poverty in that country. World Bank –poverty reduction… Taking into account that USD126 billion entered developing countries in 2004, even a small reduction of 1% in remittance transfer costs would have been enough to inject an additional US1.2 billion into the poor countries.