By NNN-PTI,
New Delhi : Asian women are joining men in migrating to other countries, in many cases as principal bread winners, says a new book.
In recent years there has been a significant rise in the number of female migrants, who sometimes come as primary breadwinners.
The male-female ratio of international level on the whole is 52.5 per cent to 47.5 per cent, though its proportion in the developed countries is almost 50:50, says the book ‘Striped Zebra, The Immigrant Psyche’ by US-based Uday C. Naval and Soofia K.Hussain, published by Rupa.
Dr Uday Naval is a retired professor of English from the University of New York. Soofia Hussain holds a Ph.D. In Sociology from Columbia University, New York. As a professor of sociology, she has over the years focused on the trials, struggles and successes of large numbers of immigrant students.
Even by the mid-1990’s, 1.5 million Asian women were working abroad, many as principal wage earners rather than as accompanying family members.
For example, 60 per cent of migrants from Sri Lanka are women who work as domestic help all over the world. In Hong Kong’s population of 7 million, 250,000 are foreign maids, mainly from the Philippines, the book says.
The authors also say that with figures exceeding 18 billion dollars, the year 2003 saw the emergence of India as the world’s largest receiver of remittances from expatriates abroad, showing a growth of 30 per cent over the previous year.