Gender Discrimination and Emigration: Push Factor Versus Screening Process Hypothesis

This article aims at providing an empirical test in order to choose between two theories. The first theory is that gender discrimination in origin countries can be a push factor for women and therefore that a reduction in discrimination can reduce the flow of female migrants. The other theory is that gender discrimination may create a " gender bias " in the selection of migrants by a collective entity like the family or the village. We show that in the latter case, a reduction in discrimination leads to an increase of skilled women migration. The paper also provides an original index of gender discrimination based on principal component analysis. Finally the empirical analysis enables us to reject the " push factor " theory and to accept the " screening process " hypothesis. All things being equal, improving gender equality at the workplace is positively correlated with the migration of women (especially the high-skilled) and negatively correlated with the migration of men (especially the low-skilled). This result is robust to several specifications and several measurements of gender equality.