Promoting gender-responsive migration governance: The need for urgent action

Diverse strategies have been adopted to tackle gender equality, with more recent calls being made for adopting a gender-responsive approach, including in the Global Compact for Migration. A gender-responsive approach to migration governance entails adopting and implementing transformative policies and programming that tackle not only gender discrimination experienced by migrants but also the underlying structural gender inequalities. As illustrated in Figure 9, this approach is at the opposite end of a gender-biased one that actively discriminates based on gender, and goes a step further than the gender-specific one, which does not deal with more profound systemic inequality issues.

Source: Adapted from Gender + Migration Hub, n.d.

Ensuring gender-responsive governance, in turn, requires evidence-based design and implementation of migration policies. While statistical data play a central role in informing migration policies, a gender data gap exists today, undermining a better understanding of the gender dimensions of migration and gender inequalities throughout the migration cycle.¹²⁰ Calls have been made for gender-disaggregated data capturing individuals’ self-identified genders, with Canada being the first country to include a mandatory question on gender in its 2021 population census, followed by New Zealand in 2023.¹²¹ Investing further in sex-disaggregated data, however, remains essential, given social norms that may hinder some countries from moving to gender disaggregation and the difficulties that may be entailed for individuals to self-identify as gender diverse. Migration data are today not all disaggregated by sex, including when it comes to bilateral data on asylum and refugee patterns and remittances, among others, undermining the possibility of undertaking any comprehensive gender analysis to inform migration policies, operations and programming.¹²² Undertaking a gender analysis also calls for combining quantitative data with qualitative data, including voices of migrants of diverse genders, to more comprehensively understand the gendered needs, priorities and vulnerabilities that need to be addressed to improve gender equality.¹²³

Nevertheless, exploring some key gender dimensions at each stage of the migration cycle highlights the extent to which migration is beset by gendered obstacles, challenges and vulnerabilities for men, women and gender-diverse individuals, often reflecting broader systemic gender inequalities. While an exhaustive mapping of gender-responsive migration policies and interventions is beyond the scope of this chapter, four key challenges cutting across the whole migration cycle and drawing from the previous sections are identified below and highlighted in Figure 10. All relate to gender norms that more broadly underpin structural gender inequalities and require adopting and implementing gender equality policies and interventions, including education and awareness-raising.¹²⁴ Each challenge is complemented by a promising practice or innovative intervention selected across a wide range of geographies. These most notably showcase the importance of a multi-stakeholder approach and of local initiatives and practices that often involve migrants of all genders or are designed in a gender-responsive manner, and that can be leveraged at the local, national, regional and global levels of migration governance.

Cross-cutting challenge 1. Addressing gendered stereotypes of migrants

Traditional gender stereotypes of the man as breadwinner and woman as caregiver have important impacts on migrants and, when coupled with rising anti-immigration discourses, nurture portrayals of women migrants as intrinsically vulnerable and victims, and men migrants as security threats and bogus refugees.¹²⁵ Without downplaying the vulnerable situations in which women may find themselves, these stereotypes disproportionately impact men migrants who may be in vulnerable situations, negate women migrants’ agency, contribute to render gender-diverse migrants more invisible and disempower migrants in contrast to their vast contributions to origin and destination societies.¹²⁶

Gender stereotypes of migrants are relayed by diverse actors, from politicians to humanitarian actors and the media. However, working with the media can be key in shaping balanced and positive perceptions. In 2021, as part of the joint ILO–UN Women Safe and Fair Programme, the ILO partnered with the Alliance of Indonesian Journalists Jakarta to organize media engagement programmes for promoting the safe and fair migration of all Indonesian women.¹²⁷ A Media-Friendly Glossary on Migration, focused particularly on women migrant workers, is also available for journalists in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).¹²⁸ In addition to providing a list of key relevant terms and rights-based definitions, the glossary offers a list of inclusive terminology with terms to avoid using, as they may perpetuate gender stereotypes of migrants (Table 1).

Source: Adapted from ILO, 2020.

Cross-cutting challenge 2. Improving gender-equal access of migrants to information

Access to information throughout the migration process can be highly gendered. While the examples in this chapter focused on information for prospective migrants in countries of origin, this also applies to migrants in countries of transit and destination, and upon return to countries of origin. It is even more difficult for transgender and other gender-diverse migrants to access information, often relying on informal sources.¹²⁹ Access to accurate information, including on migrants’ rights, is essential to decrease gender-based vulnerabilities throughout the migration cycle.

Among diverse interventions that may support a gender-responsive provision of information on migration, migrant resource centres (MRCs) have been established in countries of origin and destination as a one-stop-shop for information. In origin countries, they combine diverse services under one roof – from pre-departure orientation and community awareness to personalized online, phone or in-person counselling and even, in some cases, support for returned migrants – resulting in a decrease in the likelihood of irregular and unsafe migration, increased awareness of regular migration pathways and effectively providing information on assistance while migrating.¹³⁰ While supporting all migrants irrespective of their gender, some of these MRCs, such as in Bangladesh, provide gender-sensitive and tailored support to women before migrating and upon return.¹³¹ In Indonesia, an Integrated Gender Responsiveness One Roof Services Office was launched in 2021 as the first pilot in the ASEAN region.¹³² It relies on a multi-stakeholder partnership between the Government, migrant workers unions and women’s crisis centres to ensure gender-responsive services to prospective migrant workers.

Cross-cutting challenge 3. Bridging migrants’ gender digital divide

Today’s digital society, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, raises considerable gender inequalities: women and girls constitute the majority of the estimated 2.7 billion people worldwide who are unconnected, with major variations in women using the Internet across least developed and developed countries.¹³³ For migrants, access to and usage of digital solutions and digital literacy and skills often depend on connectivity in their country of origin, and on gender roles, as digital tools may be associated with men in the household division of labour.¹³⁴

A number of initiatives have been adopted to decrease the gender digital divide worldwide, from basic digital skills development to STEM education programmes for women, including migrants and refugees.¹³⁵ As the leader in new technological developments and digitalization, the private sector is important in fostering gender digital inclusion. In the financial sector, some financial technology companies are moving towards migrant-centric and gender-smart designs for digital remittances that are affordable, accessible and promote financial resilience.¹³⁶ Among other similar initiatives, and together with the United Nations Capital Development Fund, Ping Money – a financial technology company licensed in the United Kingdom and funded by Gambian migrants, offering digital remittances services to migrants from the Gambia – has worked on formalizing remittances channels, including by offering the possibility for migrants in the United Kingdom to directly pay water and electricity bills for their families in the Gambia and launching a mobile wallet for families receiving remittances.¹³⁷ A comprehensive market scanning revealed gender differences in Gambian households, with women less aware of mobile money. Considering gender dynamics at play – whereby information tended to reach women through their male relatives more effectively – Ping Money launched a brand awareness campaign through football sponsorships, the main sport in the Gambia.¹³⁸ This not only resulted in increasing the number of men clients but also that of women who were encouraged to use mobile money services by their men relatives.

Cross-cutting challenge 4. Enhancing regular migration pathways in a gender-responsive manner

Existing regular migration pathways raise diverse challenges throughout the migration cycle with important gender implications.

Enhancing regular migration pathways in a gender-responsive manner would require diversifying the types of pathways and improving their quality, especially in terms of migrants’ rights and entitlements. In terms of diversification, regularization schemes of irregular migrants in destination countries are often not considered regular migration pathways, although they are intrinsically complementary, filling the gaps in and the flaws of regular pathways when those create situations of irregularity.¹³⁹ Regularization schemes have long been adopted by States in different forms, sometimes targeting irregular migrants working in specific sectors (such as domestic work or the fishing industry) or more broadly implemented for humanitarian and integration reasons.¹⁴⁰ Although not gender-specific, these schemes effectively reduce vulnerabilities associated with irregularity, including gender ones.¹⁴¹ A recent illustration is that of the temporary protection status adopted by Colombia in 2021 to regularize the status of Venezuelans irregularly in the country, with more than 1.8 million permits granted so far.¹⁴²

While the quality of family migration pathways can be addressed by revising entry requirements and ensuring entitlements, rethinking BLAs in a gender-responsive and rights-based manner is today essential, including for a gender-responsive implementation of the Global Compact for Migration.¹⁴³ BLAs are an important source of the continued gender segregation of labour worldwide, and are not accompanied by the necessary protection of migrants’ rights, exacerbating gender vulnerabilities, including to exploitation. As highlighted in the Guidance on bilateral labour migration agreements, produced by the United Nations Network on Migration, a gender-responsive approach to BLAs calls for rights-based agreements that explicitly protect migrants according to international labour and human rights law instruments rather than including a vague mention of national laws, as it often is the case.¹⁴⁴ For instance, the Agreement on Labour Cooperation between Canada and the Republic of Honduras explicitly lists international labour principles and rights that must be secured into each party’s labour laws and practices, rather than assuming they are already part of those laws and practices.¹⁴⁵ While not referring to gender, such a rights‑based approach is a first step towards gender-responsive BLAs when duly grounded in the principle of non-discrimination, including on gender grounds, and extending to any additional gender-relevant international instruments, such as the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.¹⁴⁶

IOM’s new Gendered Migration Research Policy Action Lab (GenMig) is designed to bring together stakeholders from around the world to address these challenges and more (see text box below).