Although women’s representation among international migrants in
many countries has risen over the last 100 years, we know far less about
gender gaps in the labor force participation of immigrants across a wide
span of host societies. Prior studies have established that immigrant
women are doubly disadvantaged in terms of labor market outcomes in
the U.S., Canada, and Israel. These studies suggest an intriguing question:
Are there gender gaps in immigrant labor force participation across
destinations countries? In this paper, we investigate the extent to which
the double disadvantage exists for immigrant women in a variety of host
countries. We also examine how marriage moderates this double disadvantage.
For the U.S., although we find that immigrant women have
had the lowest labor force participation rates compared to natives and
immigrant men since 1960, marital status is an important stratifying
attribute that helps explain nativity differences. Extending the analysis
to eight other countries reveals strong gender differences in labor force
participation and shows how marriage differentiates immigrant
women’s labor force entry more so than men’s.