Women migrants lead way on remittances
Women migrants play a disproportionate role in determining the level of remittances sent home to developing countries, a United Nations report has found, but international policy makers have largely ignored their contribution.
The UN Population Fund's "State of the World Population 2006", released yesterday, says that women tend to send a larger proportion of their lesser resources home than men, and focus those funds more on social welfare.
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As growing attention is focused on the importance of remittance flows, which make up the second largest source of external financing in developing countries after foreign direct investment, the UN is appealing to a high-level meeting on international migration this month in New York to pay more attention to its female face.
Half of the world's migrants are women - numbering 95m - but only recently have policymakers begun to address their specific challenges, the UN says, including the exploitation of female domestic workers, and the sex trade.
Yet female migrants have a crucial impact back home. "Despite a paucity of data, one thing is clear," the UN says. "The money that female migrants send back home can raise families and even entire communities out of poverty."
In 1999, for example, women contributed more than 62 per cent of the $1bn (�780m, ￡530m) sent in remittances to Sri Lanka. Women transferred one third of the $6bn sent annually to the Philippines in the late 1990s - even though they typically received less pay for equal work. "The total women remit may be less in comparison to men," the report notes, but "women send a higher proportion of their earnings, regularly and consistently".
A 2000 study by the International Organisation for Migration showed that Bangladeshi women working in the Middle East sent home 72 per cent of their earnings on average, and that 56 per cent of female remittances were used for daily needs, healthcare or education.
"This is largely because women are more inclined to invest in their children than men," the report noted, as well as having less control over their finances. Men tended to spend remittance income on consumer items, such as cars and televisions, as well as investments such as property and livestock.
However, even that pattern was not fixed. A survey in the Dominican Republic found that 100 per cent of women returning from Spain established their own businesses. Another study found that 56 per cent of Ghanaian women migrants in Toronto had begun the process of building homes in their country of origin.
Yet women immigrants generally face greater unemployment - more so than native women in the countries they move to - and are paid less.
"Remittances would have an even greater role in poverty reduction and development if women did not face wage, employment, credit and property discrimination, and if they were not excluded from decision-making within the family and in hometown organisations," the report says.
女移民成为国际汇款“大户”
联合国(UN)的一份报告发现，女性移民在决定寄回发展中国家的汇款水平方面，发挥着超出其应有比例的重要作用，但国际决策者们在很大程度上忽视了她们的贡献。
联合国人口基金会(UN Population Funds)昨日发布的《2006年世界人口情况》(State of the World Population 2006)显示，女性拥有的财产比男性要少，但她们倾向于将其中的更大部分汇回祖国，而且她们更注重将这些资金用在社会福利方面。
随着人们对汇款流动重要性的关注程度越来越高，联合国呼吁本月在纽约召开一次关于国际移民问题的高级别会议，并给予女性移民更多关注。在发展中国家，汇款流动是仅次于外国直接投资的第二大外部资金来源。
联合国表示，全球移民的半数为女性（数量为9500万），但直到最近，决策者才开始着手解决她们所面临的特定困难，包括对国内女工的剥削，以及性交易。
但是，女性移民对本国有着至关重要的影响。联合国表示：“尽管缺乏相关数据，但有一点显而易见，即女性移民汇回国的资金，能使她们的家庭、甚至整个社区摆脱贫困。”
