ABSTRACT
Although the empirical finding that women may be more frequent migrants than men can be traced back to Ravenstein (Bartholomew 1991), the theoretical analysis of gender and inter-regional migration is relatively underdeveloped. The growth of the dual-earner household has certainly been recognized by geographers, including those concerned with migration (Boyle and Halfacree 1995; Green 1997). However, for the most part, women have been added as a data set, while gender relations, particularly those within the household, remain largely invisible. This is not to say that households are the sole institution structuring gender inequalities in returns from migration (Halfacree 1995); it is simply to argue that household relations have been under-rather than overestimated in much of the literature (Jarvis 1997). There is a danger, as Halfacree (1995) notes, of treating household structures and domestic arrangements as invariate, and failing to recognize how these can be constituted and reconstituted in the process of migration (Wilson and Tienda 1989).
