Migration can have significant influence on gender equality. It can provide opportunities for women and men to improve their well-being and participation in decision making. However, it can also reinforce discrimination and vulnerability, as well as exacerbating exclusion and isolation. Women remaining in sending communities may enjoy more autonomy, or may be burdened with more duties. Gender segregated labor markets and migration policies may push low-skilled women into less regulated, riskier and financially insecure endeavors. Likewise, men who migrate or stay behind because their wives migrate, may also experience situations that affect their lives in both positive and negative ways. To understand how migration is changing the lives of women and men, it is important to highlight issues such as:

• gender-based push factors. How do norms based on gender interact with economic opportunities, human rights and social traditions to influence who migrates?
• policy interventions making migration safer, especially for women and supporting non-coerced mobility.
• impact on households. Is migration changing composition, resource allocation, access to services, and decision making within households?

The CCT on Gender provides also a supportive function to all KNOMAD TWGs since gender equality concerns are mainstreamed in all KNOMAD work.

Areas of Focus

• Identify key policies and institutional issues for gender and migration Building on the research gaps identified by KNOMAD’s Working Paper “Literature Review on Women and Migration” and emerging findings from the other TWGs, additional working papers will be prepared. Identified areas so far are: analyzing policies which substantially impact either female or male migrants; analyzing gender questions related to forced migration; and a research project on the impact women and men migrant clothing have on public perception and integration in migrant recipient countries.
• Enhance the integration of gender equality issues in all KNOMAD TWGs. This CCT will provide feedback on TWG work programs as these emerge, and point to relevant data and analysis. The CCT will establish a dialogue with each TWG, providing examples of how gender aspects may be integrated in every specific analysis and policy advice. Through the dialogue with the TWG a better understanding about the role of gender in migration and development should be achieved. More specifically, the research shall address central issue of in what ways and to what extent enhanced gender equality can contribute to more sustainable development as defined in the SDGs.