ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a brief examination of female migration in the western countries before and during the Industrial Revolution and in the developing regions of the world. It presents a comparative analysis of the geographic mobility of women in Asia, drawing mainly upon migration data from the 1970 round of censuses to examine the extent to which women are participating in the migration process and, specifically, in migration to cities in the various countries and subregions. Thus female migration was a significant component of the European migration system. In the absence of internationally comparable data directly assessing the volume of male and female migration, one can obtain indirect evidence of the sex composition of migrants from rural to urban areas by comparing urban and rural age and sex ratios. Even in countries where men predominate in migration, the sex ratio of migration streams can vary according to distance and the size and degree of urbanization of the destination.
