Honorable Mention, 2016 Thomas and Znaniecki Award from the International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association

“In this well-researched, ambitious book Katharine Donato and Donna Gabaccia document previously undocumented patterns of women’s migration historically and across nations. Gender and International Migration is a tour de force and indispensable reading for anyone interested in gender and migration.”

—SUSAN ECKSTEIN, professor of sociology and international relations, Boston University

“This important book shows that critical theory, culture history, and quantitative data need not make an impossible marriage. By looking critically at the assumptions underlying statistical categories, without dismissing them, Katharine Donato and Donna Gabaccia have delivered the social sciences and social and migration history a great service. This path-breaking study not only rejects the simplistic notion of the ‘feminization of migration,’ but also forces us to fundamentally rethink the role of men and women in human migrations in the past five hundred years. It offers a fresh and global perspective that hopefully once and for all will do away with the stereotype of migrants as rationale male individuals, with women trailing behind. Instead Gender and International Migration puts mobile human beings back in their (gendered) social worlds. A world in which migration is the rule and individuals, families, and society are highly intertwined.”

—LEO LUCASSEN, director of research, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam

In 2006, the United Nations reported on the “feminization” of migration, noting that the number of female migrants had doubled over the last five decades. Likewise, global awareness of issues like human trafficking and the exploitation of immigrant domestic workers has increased attention to the gender makeup of migrants. But are women really more likely to migrate today than they were in earlier times? In Gender and International Migration, sociologist and demographer Katharine Donato and historian Donna Gabaccia evaluate the historical evidence to show that women have been a significant part of migration flows for centuries. The first scholarly analysis of gender and migration over the centuries, Gender and International Migration demonstrates that variation in the gender composition of migration reflects not only the movements of women relative to men, but larger shifts in immigration policies and gender relations in the changing global economy.

While most research has focused on women migrants after 1960, Donato and Gabaccia begin their analysis with the fifteenth century, when European colonization and the transatlantic slave trade led to large-scale forced migration, including the transport of prisoners and indentured servants to the Americas and Australia from Africa and Europe. Contrary to the popular conception that most of these migrants were male, the authors show that a significant portion were women. The gender composition of migrants was driven by regional labor markets and local beliefs of the sending countries. For example, while coastal ports of western Africa traded mostly male slaves to Europeans, most slaves exiting east Africa for the Middle East were women due to this region’s demand for female reproductive labor.

Donato and Gabaccia show how the changing immigration policies of receiving countries affect the gender composition of global migration. Nineteenth-century immigration restrictions based on race, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act in the United States, limited male labor migration. But as these policies were replaced by regulated migration based on categories such as employment and marriage, the balance of men and women became more equal—both in large immigrant-receiving nations such as the United States, Canada, and Israel, and in nations with small immigrant populations such as South Africa, the Philippines, and Argentina. The gender composition of today’s migrants reflects a much stronger demand for female labor than in the past. The authors conclude that gender imbalance in migration is most likely to occur when coercive systems of labor recruitment exist, whether in the slave trade of the early modern era or in recent guest-worker programs.

Using methods and insights from history, gender studies, demography, and other social sciences, Gender and International Migration shows that feminization is better characterized as a gradual and ongoing shift toward gender balance in migrant populations worldwide. This groundbreaking demographic and historical analysis provides an important foundation for future migration research.

KATHARINE M. DONATO is professor and chair of sociology at Vanderbilt University.

DONNA GABACCIA is professor of history in the Department of Historical and Cultural Studies at the University of Toronto-Scarborough.

Originally published in The Pittsburgh District, a volume of the 1914 Pittsburgh Survey, this report is an in-depth study of children's institutions in Pittsburgh at the time. Housing accommodation standards, children's schedules, and education curriculum are discussed at length. Based on the social needs of children during the rise of industry in the city, this study presents a program for the conservation and rehabilitation of the homes of children, the requirement for thoughtfully selected foster homes, the adoption of standards of care in foster homes, and the enforcement of these standards.

FLROENCE L. LATTIMORE was associate director of Department of Child Hygiene of the Russell Sage Foundation.

This series of papers is the outcome of a house-to-house investigation of infant mortality in four wards of Boston made in 1910-11 and 1911-12 by the Research Department of the Boston School for Social Workers under a grant from the Russell Sage Foundation.

HENRY H. HIBBS, JR., Department of Research of the Boston School for Social Workers and the Department of Sociology of the University of Illinois

Paper presented in part at the Indianapolis meeting of the National Conference of Charities and Correction in May 1916.

SHELBY M. HARRISON was director of the Department of Surveys and Exhibits at the Russell Sage Foundation.

Reports published by the foundation's Department of Recreation in 1913.

LEE F. HANMER was associate director of the Department of Child Hygiene at the Russell Sage Foundation.

A pamphlet published by the Russell Sage Division of Remedial Loans in 1912.

This pamphlet argues for definite measurements of results in the study of school hygiene and other areas in order to improve the school system. It was published by the Department of Child Hygiene of the Russell Sage Foundation in 1911.

LUTHER H. GULICK was director of the Department of Child Hygiene at the Russell Sage Foundation.

A look at the steel industry in Pittsburgh, this book is a volume of the Pittsburgh Survey, published in 1911. The Steel Workers deals with the work-relationships of the steel men, documenting their harsh working conditions and the union movement.

JOHN A. FITCH was a fellow at the University of Wisconsin and an expert at the New York State Department of Labor.

From the Preface of the book: "The growing interest in cooperative credit as a possible solution of the problem of financing the farmer and eliminating the evils of the small loan business in cities, intensified by the investigations of the American and United States Commissions abroad and the publication of the reports of their findings, prompts the Russell Sage Foundation, through its Division of Remedial Loans, to publish this brief statement of the operations of the Cooperative People's Bank of Canada, written by a Canadian who has been correctly termed "The founder of cooperative banking on the American continent."

ALPHONSE DESJARDINS was president and manager of La Caisse Populaire de Levis and general director of L’Action Populaire Economique.

A pamphlet published in 1910 by what was the Department of Child Hygiene of the Russell Sage Foundation. Other research areas of the Child Hygiene department included "folk dancing," "athletics," and the "use of school buildings."