Migrant women: tired of being invisible

February 26, 1992
Issue 

By Deborah Singerman

Most migration statistics and research have suffered from gender blindness. The experience of migrant women has often been subsumed under that of migrant men: the migrant experience becomes that of the principal applicant, usually male, and women are viewed primarily as part of the family unit.

Although almost 50% of female migrants apply under the family reunion category, while men predominate in the skills, humanitarian and special eligibility categories, that fact should not make migrant women invisible.

The Bureau of Immigration Research has begun to redress the balance, commissioning studies on migrant women's work, health, access to legal services and experience in refuges. Some of these findings were aired at the BIR's Women and Migration Conference, held at Melbourne University February 7-8.

Matina Mottee, chairperson of the Association of Non-English Speaking Background Women of Australia, said this was the first conference devoted to migrant women for 10 years. A community group, the Asian Australian Resource Centre, in fact held a conference on Asian women in 1989, and though the BIR conference clearly drew women from a wider range of backgrounds and birthplaces, many of the issues and grievances were depressingly familiar.

Migrant women, especially those from non-English speaking backgrounds, are still subject to stereotyping, still suffer from lack of skill recognition, still mainly work in manufacturing industries, bear the brunt of settlement, transport difficulties and inter-generational culture clashes. In the eyes of the general public, they are still lumped together, with little respect for gradations of history, skill, English proficiency and personality.

Graeme Hugo, professor of geography at Adelaide University, pointed out that the Australian Bureau of Statistics Sex Ratios for Birthplace Groups are some of the rare gender-defined immigration data. But birthplace groups alone do not take into account city-country divisions, an important distinction, said a Vietnamese woman.

Stereotypes

Many of the findings showed just how misleading perceptions can be, and the way the Australian immigration system often assumes that the principal applicant is the man of the house.

Santina Bertone (Workplace Studies Centre, Victoria University of Technology) found that while trade union officials thought migrant women were more passive, less confident and less prepared to take a position of responsibility than an Anglo-Saxon woman, among trade union members there was no difference in the attitude of NESB women and ESB women, except that fewer NESB women could attend meetings held outside the workplace. (Nevertheless, union membership among migrant women is still low, though those members are becoming more vocal.)

Research by Dr Constance Lever-Tracey, senior lecturer at Flinders University, into small businesses among Brisbane's Chinese community found that, far from being submissive and exploited, Chinese women were dynamic, responsible partners who played an important role in decision making.

In a paper by Susan Young and Ros Madden which looked at the characteristics of migrant women (the complete paper also includes migrant men), a Malaysian professional woman complained about the changes to her life since migrating to Australia.

"We have taken a big drop in income, housing is expensive, cleaning is expensive, it's difficult to get my kids into day care, and I have no leisure time." According to Young and Madden, "the existence of an extended family and the availability of servants meant that many Malaysian women had never faced the domestic childcare demands that they faced in Australia. As they struggled with these new demands, their husbands were also forced to take on greater responsibilities."

Ron Casey, assistant director at the ABS, Queensland, said in his paper on the "Labour Market and Employment Characteristics of Immigrant Women in Australia" that while NESB women with poor English are "over represented as tradespersons, plant and machinery operators, drivers and in labouring and related occupations ... Asian-born immigrant women who are proficient in English have the highest proportion of females employed as professionals of any major birthplace group".

Downgrading

Refugee women experience significant occupational downgrading on arrival in Australia, according to Dr Robyn Iredale of the University of Wollongong's Centre for Multicultural Studies. "Female refugees in the manager/administrator category experienced the greatest downward mobility in the Australian labour market: 23% were in these occupations before migration compared to 4% in 1988-89."

The female labour participation rate is very high, but many female refugees do not apply for formal recognition of their qualifications because of poor English, lack of documentation and lack of support networks.

The need for culturally sensitive support networks, interpreters and access to information about services, rights and anti-discrimination procedures was stressed in papers on work and health. Delegates also urged research into older postwar migrants, and into migrants who live in isolated rural communities.

One fear expressed by many was that hard-won services might be lost if one of Young and Madden's findings was taken too literally. This was that some migrant women were empowered by the migration and settlement process, now having more "confidence and resources to make major decisions in their lives", and causing a power shift (invariably not recognised by their husbands) within the family.

This concern highlighted the main underlying tension at the conference. Many migrant women clearly felt excluded from the BIR research, and urged that NESB women and community ted — and acknowledged — far more than they had been. A list of proposed implementation strategies was drawn up, taking on board the need to further involve NESB women.

Similarly, a research agenda on migrant women was discussed, including such topics as links between changes in women's roles and status and migration, examination of how specific policies such as housing affect migrant women, gender differences in skill recognition and comparisons of migrant women's characteristics with those of migrant men and Australian-born women.

It was clear that migrant women were heartily sick of being neglected and that any future BIR researchers who did not include gender differences where relevant would fail to do so at their own peril.

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