Remittances and Gender Equality. The role of remittances in reducing gender inequality in migrants’ countries of origin

Abstract

The current thesis attempts to address an existing gap in the academic literature on the potential role of remittances in reducing gender inequality in migrants’ countries of origin with the use of quantitative methods. Theoretical framework is built on scholarly explanations of the reasons preventing women from achieving equal status with men in the present age and the review of the existing research on the relationship between remittances and gender equality. Here the paper presents opposing views on potentially positive and negative effects of remittances on gender equality in remittance-receiving countries. Based on this discussion the hypothesis being tested is that remittances contribute to reducing gender inequality in migrants’ countries of origin and that this effect is more profound in the long term. To test whether this assumption holds, the study relies on fixed effects regression model that involves remittances per capita and Gender Inequality Index as independent and dependent variables respectively. The data used is time-series-crosssectional data on 141 countries for a period of 1995-2012 coming from World Bank, UNDP and Quality of Government Institute. The obtained results support the research hypothesis that the higher the level of remittances in receiving countries is, the lower the level of Gender Inequality Index is, and that the effect of remittances is greater in the long-run. The main contribution of the thesis is that it is likely to be the first study that examines the relationship between remittances and gender inequality with the use of TSCS analysis involving the wide range of countries over relatively extended period of time.