Conclusion

This chapter has explained the interactions between migration and gender, although providing an overview of the gender dimensions of migration is a challenging exercise. First, gender is not a neutral term today, influenced by the gender biases possessed by the overwhelming majority of the global population, including gender backlash and anti-gender movements, which have been growing over the past decade.¹⁴⁷ Approaching the notion of gender through a rights-based approach enables a more neutral analysis, highlighting discrimination and focusing on rights protection without promoting the rights of one gender over the others. From this perspective, and as apparent in this chapter, a gender-responsive approach is not only about women’s rights but more broadly about striving for gender equality, although today’s reality remains that of disproportionate gender discrimination against women and persons with diverse gender identities, including throughout the migration cycle. This discrimination cannot be isolated from wider practices of State underinvestment in care provision and social protection, resulting in women and other minority groups being recruited into these sectors to augment weak State welfare provisioning.¹⁴⁸ This is happening in contexts where women and other minority groups face structural and systemic barriers to accessing the pathways to full rights and access to citizenship.

Second, as migration is intrinsically a gendered phenomenon, the interconnections between migration and gender are diverse, if not infinite. Taking a migrant’s perspective, however, enables a better understanding of gendered experiences throughout the migration cycle, which are shaped by diverse opportunities and obstacles related to prevailing gender norms. Far from positing a deterministic view of the role of gender in migration, migrants’ perspectives showcase the agency of migrants in navigating gender norms and roles and coping with existing discrimination in countries of origin, transit and destination.

Third, the interactions between migration and gender cannot be understood without taking into account other factors that intersect in shaping migrants’ migration decisions, trajectories and experiences, as neither migrant groups nor gender groups are homogenous. Among other factors, age and life cycle play important roles, alongside structural factors such as migration policies underpinned by gender norms and biases. Limited and restrictive regular migration pathways end up exacerbating existing vulnerabilities relating to the division of labour in households and highly gendered sectors of work, creating distinct challenges in terms of irregularity and informality.

Today, the importance of addressing gender inequalities in migration cannot be underestimated. Just as the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the interdependency of our individual fates, gender inequalities in migration underscore broader systemic gender inequalities that deny human development for all. Adopting a gender-responsive approach to migration governance is thus a necessity to empower migrants of all genders and further gender equality more generally as the “prerequisite for a better world”.¹⁴⁹