Family Migration and Subsequent Employment: The Effect of Gender Ideology
| Published date | 01 February 2016 |
| Date | 01 February 2016 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12251 |
| Author | Philipp M. Lersch |
P M. L University of Cologne
Family Migration and Subsequent Employment:
The Effect of Gender Ideology
A substantial body of evidence shows gender
asymmetry in family migration, with women
more likely to leave employment follow-
ing migration than men. Gender ideologies,
although yet not tested directly, have been
proposed as one determinant for these asym-
metries. Analyzing longitudinal data from the
British Household Panel Survey (1991–2008)
on 3,333 dual-earner couples with dyadic mul-
tilevel regression models, the author examined
whether the association of family migration
with subsequent employment is moderated by
the gender ideologies of both partners. The
existing literature is enrichedby illustrating that
women’s gender ideologies do not moderate the
association, but women with egalitarian part-
ners are less likely to leave employment after
family migration than those with traditional
partners. No signicant effects for men were
found. Even after controlling for both partners’
gender ideologies and relevant control vari-
ables, a substantial gender difference in the risk
of leaving employment after family migration
remains, meriting further research.
The majority of women in postindustrialized
societies are integrated into the labor market,
with dual-earner couples the norm. Despite
this development, gender asymmetries in
Institute of Sociology and Social Psychology, Universityof
Cologne, Greinstr. 2, 50939 Cologne, Germany
(p.m.lersch@uni-koeln.de).
Key Words: dual earner, dyadic/couple data, employment,
gender,life events and/or transitions.
labor market outcomes remain salient (Raley,
Mattingly, & Bianchi, 2006). Internal family
migration—that is, long-distance residential
moves of couples with and without children
within national borders—may be one cause
among many of these persisting asymmetries
because of its disruptive effect on female
employment (Cooke, Boyle, Couch, & Feijten,
2009; Morrison & Lichter, 1988; Taylor, 2007).
Previous analyses of premigration gender differ-
ences in human capital and relative resources,
which reect women’s disadvantaged labor
market positions, and structural constraints
remain insufcient explanations of these gender
asymmetries in outcomes of family migration.
As a result, individual gender ideologies have
been proposed to additionally explain part of
the gender asymmetries, but they have not yet
been sufciently examined (Bielby & Bielby,
1992; Shauman & Noonan, 2007). In this study
I explored this gap and scrutinized whether
the association of migration with subsequent
employment is moderated by individual, prem-
igration gender ideologies of both partners in
dual-earner couples. To this end, I used longi-
tudinal data from the British Household Panel
Survey (BHPS), taking advantage of its unique
measurement of individual gender ideologies at
repeated observations.
Family migration decisions have the potential
to be “major career-prioritizing decisions”
(Pixley, 2008, p. 130) within couples in
which one partner’s career—typically the
man’s—is prioritized, with the secondary career
subsequently constrained. Such inequities
may manifest themselves in shifts in standing
230 Journal of Marriage and Family 78 (February 2016): 230–245
DOI:10.1111/jomf.12251
Family Migration and Subsequent Employment 231
arrangements regarding the division of wage
work and domestic work and may lead to cumu-
lative (dis-)advantages. Empirical evidence
clearly shows that male careers are mostly
prioritized in heterosexual couples and that
partnered women are more likely to temporarily
leave employment after migration compared to
partnered men or single women who migrate
(e.g., Boyle, Feng, & Gayle, 2009; Duncan
& Perrucci, 1976; Morrison & Lichter, 1988;
Shauman & Noonan, 2007; Shihadeh, 1991).
Even temporary interruptions, by promoting
discontinuous female work histories, may have
severe repercussions for the careers and future
pension rights of women (Taylor, 2007). In this
regard, family migration is analogous to the
impact of childbirth, with comparable long-term
effects of both events evident on the intracou-
ple earning gap between women and men due
primarily to steeper wage growth for men after
migration (Cooke et al., 2009).
Because early theoretical approaches, such as
the human capital model (Mincer, 1978), have
remained insufcient explanations of these dis-
parities, scholars have considered the gender
ideologies of migrants as an additional source
of inequalities, emphasizing the cultural dimen-
sion of the migration decision (Bielby & Bielby,
1992; Bird & Bird, 1985). Gender ideologies
describe the degree to which individuals support
a gendered division of labor (Davis & Green-
stein, 2009). It has been argued that traditional
gender ideologies (those that support a gendered
division of labor whereby men are the primary
breadwinners of the family and women assume
primary responsibility for unpaid family work)
lead couples to weigh positive as well as negative
occupational consequences of family migration
more heavily for men than for women.
Currently, however, the empirical evidence
regarding the inuence of gender ideology on
outcomes after family migration remains decid-
edly underdeveloped. Limited support for alter-
native explanations of gender asymmetries has
been treated as indirect evidence of the inu-
ence of gender ideology, without explicit tests
of this association (e.g., Shauman & Noonan,
2007). More direct tests of the association are
also restricted. Early tests directly examining
individual gender ideology suffered from con-
siderable data limitations, narrowing their scope
(e.g., Bird & Bird, 1985). Other studies used
static concepts of gender roles, ignoring the
interpersonal variation and temporal dynamics
in individual ideologies (e.g., Shihadeh, 1991).
In addition, gender ideology has often been mea-
sured at the couple level in previous research,
ignoring individual-level variation (e.g., Jürges,
2006). More recently, studies haverevisited gen-
der ideology as a determinant of migration but
have failed to examine the outcomes of these
events (e.g., Brandén, 2014).
B
The relevant unit for family migration decisions
in the vast majority of cases is the couple, with
both partners actively involved in the delibera-
tion of the potential consequences of migration
for themselves and their partners (Morrison &
Lichter, 1988; Shauman, 2010). Mutually ben-
ecial migration outcomes regarding employ-
ment in dual-earner couples remain improbable
because of the dispersed distribution of occu-
pational opportunities across locations (Mincer,
1978). As a consequence, partners may have
conicting interests in the migration decision
process: A prospective place of residence may
offer attractive job opportunities to one part-
ner, and this partner is likely to have received
a tangible job offer previous to any considera-
tion of family migration. This place of residence
may leave the remaining partner short of suitable
job opportunities. Partners who initiate migra-
tion for their own advantage have been labeled
lead migrants, whereas those who move along
facing prospective disadvantageous opportuni-
ties represent tied migrants. Several theoretical
perspectives havebeen developed to explain how
both partners weigh the consequences of migra-
tion and may prioritize one career to the detri-
ment of the other.
Previous Explanations of Family Migration
Two of these explanations, the human capital
and relative resource models, do not take into
account an independent gender effect on the pri-
oritization of careers. Instead, the human capital
model argues that couples migrate to unitarily
maximize their collective incomes, which may
in turn result in disparate returns for both part-
ners (Mincer, 1978). Such inequality in returns
within couples is to be expected if both part-
ners’ earning potentials, as a function of their
individual human capital, diverge. Partners with
higher levels of human capital are expected
to be prioritized in migration decisions, and
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