Gender and job mobility among rural to urban temporary migrants in the Pearl River Delta in China

Abstract

Previous studies have found that there is a female disadvantage among rural migrants in the urban labour market in China. It remains unclear whether migrant women also lag behind migrant men in job mobility, an important channel for rural migrants to improve their labour market outcomes. Using data from a large-scale survey conducted in the Pearl River Delta region, one of the most important migration destinations in China, we examine gender gaps in job mobility of rural migrants from 1979 to 2006. Focusing on job mobility, this paper sheds new light on the changing gender dynamics among rural migrants in China. Most of the model results lend support to our hypotheses concerning the gendered job mobility patterns of rural migrants. We find that migrant women are less likely to change jobs for work-related reasons and more likely to engage in family-centered job mobility. Results of fixed-effects models of monthly wage further reveal that the positive effect of work-centered job mobility on rural migrants’ wages is smaller for migrant women. We also find that marriage does not disadvantage migrant women more than men in either work centred or family centred job mobility, and that there is a declining trend of female disadvantage in family-centered job mobility, which all points to the transformative role migration plays for rural migrants.