Abstract:
More women than men migrate internally in Sri Lanka, the majority of female
migrants migrating to the urban areas of the Western Province either due to the
availability of female-oriented job opportunities in industrial, commercial, and service
sectors, or for marriage- and family-related reasons. However, there is a lack of
research on employment participation and its determinants with respect to women
who have migrated. This paper investigates the status of migrant women’s
employment participation and its determinants, taking the Kalutara District as a case
study. Migrant households were selected from 3 Urban Council areas using the simple
random sampling method. The sample size was 582 urban migrant women (aged 18-
59). Data were gathered through an interviewer administered questionnaire from April
to June,2014. The results related to the demographic and socio-economic
determinants of the employment participation of women were presented based on
descriptive and logistic regression analyses. Results based on descriptive analysis
revealed that the mean age of migrant women was 36.4 years and that only about 30%
of migrant women were employed. More than half of migrant women of the sample
(59.0%) were Sinhalese, while Tamils and Moors were 7.0 % and 34.0 %
respectively. Employment participation was higher among Sinhalese and Tamil
migrant women (35% each) compared to Moors (21.4%). More than half of the
women had an educational level of G.C.E. O/L or below and more educated women
(G.C.E. A/L and above) were employed compared to those with a lower level of
education. More than half of the unemployed women would like to engage in homebased
self-employment. The logistic regression results revealed that marital status,
level of education, household size, ethnicity, and household dependency status were
significant predictors of employment participation of urban migrant women. These
findings suggest that policies and programmes should focus on skill development and
facilitate self-employment activities to improve the employability of urban migrant
women.
