Rural-Urban Migration in Gender and Development Perspectives: a case of China

The relationship between population mobility and development is a study topic draw attention in China and worldwide. This paper will study the issue in a gender perspective, to exam the impact of migration to rural-urban migrants, especially the duel impact to rural women. Women migrants made almost half of labor migrants in the last decade in China and the size is still increasing. With the most recent population census data and the Third Wave Survey on the Social Status of Women in China, both took place in 2010, this paper will describe the facts about migration by gender, including the size, age pattern, sex ratio of migrants, and motivation to migrate, and compare the current status with that of one decade earlier. With a framework of resource/opportunity—agency/competence—decision making/choice, this paper will analyze the impact of migration experience to rural women, and compare that with other reference groups, such as rural women never migrated or migrant men. The study find that migration provided more opportunities to rural women that never available before regarding economic participation and income earning, however the family constrains remain specifically to women, caught them in the dilemma of career development and family responsibility