Empowering Absence? Assessing the Impact of Transnational Male Out-Migration on Left behind Wives

Saroj Koirala ()
Additional contact information
Saroj Koirala: Department of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Jyväskylä, 40014 Jyväskylä, Finland

Social Sciences, 2023, vol. 12, issue 2, 1-19

Abstract: Experiences of left-behind family members of transnational migrant workers have been in the shadow of academic discourse on migration. To contribute to the slowly growing body of literature, this study explores the impact of male out-migration on left-behind wives. The study proposes and applies a novel framework to estimate Women Empowerment Index (WEI) for comparing the empowerment level across households with and without men in transnational labor. Cross-sectional surveys and unstructured interviews were used to collect data from 373 respondents from three selected areas in Nepal. Results indicate that left-behind wives experience a higher degree of decision-making authority, physical mobility, and involvement in socio-political spheres compared to women with husbands at home. However, left behind wives were found to experience increased unpaid workload and decreased access to information, together with emotional and psychological costs in the absence of their husbands.

Keywords: transnational labor migration; left-behind women; male out-migration; women empowerment index; Nepal (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/12/2/80/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/12/2/80/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:12:y:2023:i:2:p:80-:d:1055696

Access Statistics for this article

Social Sciences is currently edited by Ms. Yvonne Chu

More articles in Social Sciences from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().