ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the female component of migration patterns in Peninsular Malaysia both past and present. Peninsular Malaysia historically had an unbalanced, heavily male sex ratio because of the influx of male immigrants from China and India in the last century and the earlier part of this century. Migrants have a younger age distribution than both the urban and rural female population. About 77 percent of the female rural-to-urban migrants above age ten in all some community groups were between 10 and 30 years old when they migrated. There are few references to rural-to-urban migrant women in Peninsular Malaysia. The proportion of migrant women without education is lower than the proportion of urban women, however, and less than half the proportion of rural women in the same category. The labor-force participation of female rural-to-urban migrants in Peninsular Malaysia differs from that in many other countries where migrant women are poor and take menial jobs to support themselves and their families.
