👩🏻‍🎓✈️💘 International Courtship

Dr. Jarryd Willis PhD
55 min readDec 4, 2022

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International female students are more likely to continue living in the host country after graduation

International female students are more likely to continue living in the host country after graduation (Yuqi Cheng, 2020; Cheung & Xu, 2015; Docquier et al., 2009; Amelie Constant, 2019; Gaule, 2014; Elveren & Toksoz, 2019; Grigoleit-Richter, 2017; Monti, 2019; Kerr, 2020; Adriana Ravara, 2018; Güngör & Tansel, 2008; Güngör and Tansel, 2014; Ruyssen & Salamone, 2018).

Will add citations as I find them ⬆️

Yue Qian & Liana Sayer, 2016

— In East Asia, progress on gender equality in public & private arenas is largely attributable to changes in women’s roles; not men’s (Frejka et al, 2010). Women are more economically independent than before & more likely than men to expect an egalitarian marriage (Jones, 2007).

Though many “forces have increased women’s educational & employment opportunities, the gendered division of labor remains stubbornly entrenched (Oshio et al., 2013).”

👩🏻‍🎓Women Stay Abroad

Yuqi Cheng, 2020

— Women are inherently more likely to stay in the US after graduation.

Cheung & Xu, 2015

— Only 5% of Indians who earn a doctorate degree overseas return home (Mishra, 2013).

— Finn (2010) found that out of the 9K international students who received their PhDs in the United States in 2002, 65% of them remained in the US after 5 years.

— China and India had the highest stay rates, with 92% of Chinese and 81% of Indian 2002 doctoral graduates still in the United States after five years.

Docquier et al., 2009

— Educated women are better able than uneducated women to escape gender discrimination in their country of origin by staying in the host country after graduation.

Amelie Constant, 2019

— Women are less likely to return home after graduation.

Gaule, 2014

— Women are less likely to return home.

Turkey — Elveren & Toksoz, 2019

— “Being female does increase the likelihood of an intention not to return”

Grigoleit-Richter, 2017

High-skilled women stay in the host country.

Monti, 2019

— 1. Women are less likely to return than men.
— 2. Married individuals show lower return probabilities than singles… [though this] is mainly driven by married women.

Kerr, 2020

— Women are the majority of US college students & of students studying abroad.

Adriana Ravara, 2018

— Fleeing human rights violations’ empowers those who would be powerless at home: women.

Güngör and Tansel (2008)

— International “women students show less tendency to return to Turkey than men”

Güngör and Tansel, 2014

— Females are more likely to report their intention to stay abroad than males.

Ruyssen & Salamone, 2018

— Women’s migration intentions are found to be stronger when gender inequalities are more severe.

— Women represent more than 48% of the 244 million international migrants in the world (United Nations, 2015).

— Women outnumber men in developed countries with 51.5% while in developing countries they make up 45.6% of the total immigrant stock.

v— Similar numbers apply for OECD and non-OECD countries (see Artuç et al., 2015).

Female Refugees

Female refugees are less likely to want to return home if they have been receiving education in their refugee location, especially if they fear that returning would diminish their chance to continue their education and/or career (Fagen, 2011).

Women who migrate abroad for education often enjoy more freedom than they do at home; this may be part of the reason why they choose to migrate (Temin, et al. 2013).

SoCal Lab Data (Preliminary)

International students who plan to return home after graduation are significantly less likely to have an American lover (13.5%) than international students who plan to stay in the US (51.9%) and American students (87.7%), χ2(2, N = 719) = 163.50, p < .001.

The prevalence of interracial friendships is higher for International students with American lovers (M = 7.17) than for those whose lover plans to stay in the United States (M = 4.86) or whose lover plans to return to their home country after graduation (M = 4.53), F(2, 67) = 5.00, p = .009.

Of 104 American-International Couples, 31 of them (29.8%) included a multiracial lover.

In cases where an international student was dating someone planning to return to their home country after graduation, they were from the same home country.

Brilliant RA Focused on International Students’ Relationships

“[Opposite-sex couples] become structurally less egalitarian with age because the wife gets older whereas the husband increases in income/job status.

Marriage may start egalitarian but becomes asymmetric over time… [due to time].”

☆ Nurture Effect ☆

— American students (56.6%) were significantly more likely to be dating interracially than international students (20.5%), χ2(1, N = 1392) = 131.72, p < .001. Indeed, among all ethnoracial groups (except multiracial & Hispanic students), American students were more likely to date interracially than international students.

— This nurture effect was significant for East Asian students , χ2(1, N = 551) = 51.39, p < .001, & marginally significant for White students, χ2(1, N = 186) = 3.39, p = .066.

— Moreover, the finding that American students are more likely to date interracially remained significant in an analysis with multiracial Americans removed, χ2(1, N = 1123)= 51.61, p < .001. (Note: Multiracial international students [n = 13] remained in the analysis.)

First-Generation Students

— 1st Generation college students (38.9%) were significantly less likely to report dating interracially, χ2(1, N=868) = 20.82, p < .001.

Multiracial Interracial Preference

— Multiracials are significantly more likely to date interracially than monoracials, χ2(2, N = 2732) = 476.93, p < .001.

Female international students are more likely to stay in the host country after graduation

Bare Branches Day — Lisa Eklund, 2018

— In China, “Bare Branches Day” is celebrated every year on November 11th & contributes to the sense that being unmarried is a cause of concern.

‘While female students are allowed to enter men’s dormitories, male students are not allowed to enter women’s, except for example carrying heavy luggage.’

“One reason why women were not able to “capitalize” on their numeric shortage was the existence of gendered dating scripts preventing women from being proactive in courtship”

.

https://thechinaproject.com/2019/11/11/bare-branches/

In East Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, North America, Western Europe, and Central and Eastern Europe, more women go abroad for their studies than men.

https://services.intead.com/blog/trending-female-international-student-mobility

Table of Contents

Yue Qian & Liana Sayer, 2016
· 👩🏻‍🎓Women Stay Abroad

· SoCal Lab Data (Preliminary)
Brilliant RA Focused on International Students’ Relationships
· ☆ Nurture Effect ☆
First-Generation Students
Multiracial Interracial Preference
· Bare Branches Day — Lisa Eklund, 2018

· JP Deering, 2019 — ∘ Henry & Andrews, 2017
· International Students
China, ∘ India, ∘ Iran, ∘ United States of America
· Laura Silver, 2021 (Pew Research)
· International Students & Global Image — Fang Bao, 2017
Remarriages Are Inter-Nationality

· 👩🏻‍🎓International Romance & Academic Motivation — Winter et al., 2021
· 👩🏻‍🎓Long Distance & International Students — Amelia, 2020
· 👩🏻‍🎓Acculturative Stress & Gender — Rhein, 2018
International European & International Asian Students
· 👩🏻‍🎓Chinese International Students Dating in Australia — Chen & Liu, 2021
Sajiao
· 👩🏻‍🎓Lim & Kingminghae, 2017
· § — Philippines — Ian Salvana et al., 2022
👩🏻‍🎓Female Brain Drain or Female Empowerment — Adriana Ravara, 2018
· Kerr, 2020
· 👩🏻‍🎓OPT & Visas — Yuqi Cheng, 2020
· 👩🏻‍🎓Women Stay — Amelie Constant, 2019
· 👩🏻‍🎓Women Stay — Gaule, 2014
Repeat/ Circular Migration
Onward Migration
· Women Stay — Monti, 2019
· Not Birds of Passage — Grigoleit-Richter, 2017
Diversity Isn’t Inclusion
· 👩🏻‍🎓Intl’ Student Health & Employment — Pang et al., 2021
· 👩🏻‍🎓International Students’ Sexual Literacy — Baek et al., 2012
· Chen & Liu, 2021 (just for fun 💁🏻‍♀️) [for now]
· Long Distance & International Students — Amelia, 2020
Defining Long Distance
Difficulties
· Female Brain-Drain or Female Empowerment — Adriana Ravara, 2018
This → Irish Women’s Immigration
Jamaica → London
Dominican Republic → USA
The Data

· Sayonara
🤖The Ubiquitous Female Voice — Zhuyue Peng (personal communication)

· Origin of “Birds of Passage”
· Birds of Passage — Caroline Waldron Merithew, 2018 (May 23)
· 💍China & Unmarried Women — Harriet Zurndorfer, 2018
Leftover Women
Media (and Ladies Training Institutes)
· Chinese Media on International Romance — Pan Wang, 2019
Global Hypergamy
· 👩🏻‍🎓Thai & Chinese Students— Lim & Kingminghae, 2017
· Frejka et al., 2018👶🏻

· Japanese Couples’ Division of Labor — Hertog et al., 2021
· 24 Countries — Man-Yee Kan & Kamila Kolpashnikova, 2021
· 25 counties — Unpaid Care — Naomi Lightman & Claire Link, 2021
Racial Differences in the Motherhood Wage Penalty — Jiaqi Li, 2022
· (RND) Marriage Package — Frejka et al., 2010 — East Asian Childbearing
Marriage is the Gatekeeper to Childbearing
· Interracial History & Sustained Preference (Developing Data)
Monoracial Minority Subjects
White Subjects
· Haafu (Torngren & Okamura, 2020)
· Social Utilitarianism Example
· 💘

· Sidenotes
Mexican Segregation (Jennifer Nájera, 2015)
Miyawaki, 2015
· 🎮❤️Tracy McVeigh, 2016
· The Great Salary Convergence — Aki Ito, 2022 (August 8)
· Curington et al., 2020
Asian Multiracials
Blasians — Lauren Davenport, 2018
Statues
· History
Transracial Adoptees — Sarah Gray, 2021
Hetherington et al. (2002)
Full Time Divorce — Alexandra Killewald, 2016
· 🔱 Triton Pride: First Day of School at UCSD (Erika Johnson, 2022)
Generation Z: unafraid to speak up
Transfer — Chronicle of Higher Education, Ascendium, et al., 2022
· Why don’t more students transfer?
4.5 Million Community College Students
What Are Transfer Numbers Like Now?
What Are Some Common Hurdles?
10.10 Update — Rebuilding Department Culture (Chronicle of Higher Education)
Numbers: The Universal Language (Anand Jagatia, 2019) [November 22]
· Math & Language — Miura et al., 1993
· 11.6 Update
Frequency of Kissing — Allendorf & Ghimire, 2013
· 🌈👩‍👩‍👧Jiri Ammer, 2017 — ROPA Strategy
· Wife 2’s Egg & Wife 1’s Gestation — Reception of Partner’s Oocytes Method — Brandao et al., 2022

— Sex before marriage is a more serious moral issue for Chinese women compared with their male counterparts (Yuxin, 2011).

— Premarital sex is still considered as immoral in the Chinese society, and women in particular are expected to preserve their virginity until marriage (Zheng et al., 2011)

JP Deering, 2019

Iran and India send significantly larger proportions of female STEM international students to the US than any other country.

Two of the top five countries for sending STEM students to the US, India and Iran, also send female STEM students to the US in greater proportions than any other country. Although growth in female international STEM enrollments from India is slowing, 76% of the 69,105 Indian women studying in the US are pursuing STEM degrees, while 70% of the 4,785 Iranian women studying in the US are doing the same.

Relatively, this is twice as many women pursuing STEM in the US as one would expect to find from a given country, a difference that, in the case of Iran, results from the emphasis secondary education places on the applied sciences. Indeed, the proportion of outbound female STEM students in Iran matches the number of female STEM students who pursue their degree in-country — 70% in 2015. This same narrative, however, does not define the trend of STEM-pursuing female students in India, a country where women are largely underrepresented in STEM fields. Only 14% of STEM researchers in India are women, compared to the global average of 28.4%.

Nevertheless, the relatively large cohort of female STEM students coming to the US from India constitutes a group of women defined by self-efficacy and determination to pursue educational and career opportunities not immediately available in their home country.

Henry & Andrews, 2017

Some Iranian women have chosen to pursue STEM studies abroad because it is discouraged at home.

Cultural factors have also led to an increase in female student mobility. Chinese women have reported personal growth, the desire for a global experience and not having the constraint of marriage as motivators for studying abroad.

International Students

China

What percent of international students are from China = 35%

Whereas in 2020, Chinese K-12 students composed nearly 44% (25,941) of the total number of international K-12 students in the country, in 2021 this proportion fell to 37% (17,375) (Monitor ICEF).

China remained the leading place of origin for international students, with 35% of all international students in the 2020–21 school year hailing from the country. The second most common place of origin was India (18%), followed by South Korea (4%) and Canada (3%) (Pew Research).

About 44% (552,188) of F-1 and M-1 international students in calendar year 2020 were female, while 56% (698,964) were male (Business Standard, 2021).

“Chinese women have reported personal growth, the desire for a global experience and not having the constraint of marriage as motivators for studying abroad” (Emily Henry & Cathryn Andrews, 2017).

India

Among Indian students, figures have shown that 35% were females and 65% males. [Erudera, 2021]

Iran

Some Iranian women have chosen to pursue STEM studies abroad because it is discouraged at home.

United States of America

Women are 67% of the American students leaving the US to study abroad.

“In sending more female than male students to study abroad, the US diverges from the slight majority of countries — about 52% worldwide — whose outbound international student cohorts favor male students. In comparison, Japan and Russia send female students to the States in [more balanced] proportions of 54%, and 57%” (JP Deering, 2019).

Laura Silver, 2021 (Pew Research)

American universities are generally held in high esteem around the world, according to a spring Pew Research Center survey in 16 advanced economies. A median of 59% of adults across these societies describe American universities as either the best in the world or above average relative to those in other developed nations.

International Students & Global Image — Fang Bao, 2017

Recruiting international students has long been seen as a useful way to raise a country’s international profile, and China is hopeful that its efforts in this area will help improve its global image.

International students are also a boon to a country’s educational services sector. Many nations are currently eyeing ways to get a bigger piece of this pie, and the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia have all made higher education a key part of their international trade strategies. According to WTO, in 2015, American educational exports were worth as much as $35.76 billion.

Remarriages Are Inter-Nationality

For example, remarried Asian Americans, regardless of sex, have low percentages of marrying U.S.-born Asians (15.6% for men & 17.1% for women), but have high percentages of marrying foreign-born Asians (22.2% for men & 24.4% for women).

This result needs further investigation.

The rapid rise of interracial marriage signals declines in social distance among racial/ethnic groups and improvement in racial/ethnic relations (Alba and Nee 2003; Bean et al., 2004).

👩🏻‍🎓International Romance & Academic Motivation — Winter et al., 2021

— Women may be much more inclined to plan their individual aspirations in line with that of the partner while men are more driven by their own aspirations irrespective of having a partner or not.

De Winter, T., Van Mol, C., & de Valk, H. A. G. (2021, February 13). International Student Mobility Aspirations: The Role of Romantic Relationships and Academic Motivation. Journal of Studies in International Education. SAGE Publications. http://doi.org/10.1177/1028315321990747

👩🏻‍🎓Long Distance & International Students — Amelia, 2020

This study investigated how international students maintain their relationship to stay feeling close with their romantic partners although separated by distance or live in a different country, the difficulties and the reasons they choose to remain in the long-distance relationship. Semi-structured interviewed were conducted to four international students. Five themes emerged, they are “keep in touch”, “this is my look”, “trustworthiness as foundation”, “family’s support”, and “relationship’s goal is get married”. The participants utilize many ways of communication to keep in touch well because it also becomes a difficulty for the relationship if it is not done seriously. Since many of the participants have got support from their family, it makes them more believed that this relationship would be no matter even in a long-distance relationship. Admittedly, the distance has both beneficial and negative aspects, but how the couples handle it through the communication, always trust each other and share the relationship’s goal, determined the maintenance and help to feel close in the long-distance relationship.

👩🏻‍🎓Acculturative Stress & Gender — Rhein, 2018

Women score higher in culture shock & distress than men (Fritz et al., 2008; Pantelidou & Craig, 2006; Rosenthal et al., 2007).

Given the lack of familiarity with the new environment, international students have a greater need for support than do the local student populace (Andrade, 2006; Pantelidou & Craig, 2006). Several studies examined the role of social support (Chirkov et al., 2008; Jung et al., 2007; Lee et al., 2004; Sumer et al., 2008; Toyokawa & Toyokawa, 2002) and self-efficacy (e.g., Li & Gasser, 2005) as crucial factors in international students’ adjustment research.

International European & International Asian Students

Fritz et al. (2008) analyzed international Asian & European students in North America and addressed which stressors affected each group.

Asians reported more problems with language whereas Europeans experienced more problems in regard to homesickness. Asian students also scored significantly higher in anxiety measures. Asian students were less likely to seek help for their adjustment troubles, but there was no significant difference in Asian and European students regarding overall adjustment.

Most research on this area of international students conducted in Western universities concludes that Asians and other minorities experience more stress than do others upon their arrival to the host country (Berry & Sam, 1997).

The over-generalization of ‘Asian’ is, however, problematic. While many Asian nations share similarities in culture such as a high degree of collectivism and high power distance, Asia is not a homogenous continent; there are dramatic differences in culture, history, religion, language, climate, food and ethnicity. The same observation can be made of the visiting European students who are often characterized as one specific entity. This homogenization of students from a variety of cultures, histories, religions, languages, climates, culinary backgrounds and ethnicities is problematic.

👩🏻‍🎓Chinese International Students Dating in Australia — Chen & Liu, 2021

— ‘Digital Natives’ (Thornham & McFarlane, 2011)
- they have grown up using digital technologies and becoming familiar with digital objects and environments (Qiu, 2009).

— Women are expected to get married by the age of 27 and to be subordinate to their husbands (Fincher, 2014; Gaetano, 2014). In comparison to their male counterparts, divorced women in China face more social pressure and discrimination, & are less likely to remarry (Ding & Xu, 2015).

— Premarital sex is still considered as immoral in the Chinese society, & women in particular are expected to preserve their virginity until marriage (Zheng et al., 2011). Sex before marriage is a more serious moral issue for Chinese women compared with their male counterparts (Yuxin, 2011).

— Asian men have consistently been portrayed as asexual or sexually unattractive (Han, 2008; Nemoto, 2009).
— Asian women have traditionally been portrayed as hyperfeminine and hypersexual, that is to say, sexually available (Koshy, 2004; Shimizu, 2007).

— In China, stigmatized/ostracized Chinese women prefer dating White men to extricate themselves from the patriarchal Chinese culture (Liu, 2017; Zurndorfer, 2018).

Chinese women turn to Western men for dating opportunities because they’re less concerned about age & divorce history.
Some female participants explicitly expressed their desires and preferences for either a kind of age-friendly or queer-friendly ‘caring masculinity’, as embodied by White men (Elliott, 2016). Their constructions of positive intimate relationships center on the maintenance of individual space and autonomy.

— Mainstream Chinese cultural expectations of ideal femininity are typically embodied by ‘fair-skinned’ women (Ding & Xu, 2015, p. 98). [Thus, some Chinese women may seek western men because their] ‘tanned skin’ is not favored by Chinese men.

— It is still rare to see Chinese man-White woman marriages in China (Pan, 2015). Asian men’s sexualities have constantly been stereotyped and marginalised in the West (Han, 2008; Larson, 2006).

Sajiao

Mainstream Chinese gender expectations encourage women to perform sajiao, which means being ‘delicate, dependent and vulnerable’ (Qiu, 2013, p. 232). The sajiao femininity, however, is almost the opposite of the mainstream ‘post-feminism femininity’ of Western societies which advocates women’s independence and autonomy (Dobson, 2015). In our research data, we noticed that male participants used their expectations of Chinese femininity to justify devaluing White women.

— [Chinese] male participants overwhelmingly reported that they did not particularly seek to engage with White women. Most male participants explicitly questioned the attractiveness of White women and criticized their perceived sexual ‘promiscuity’.

👩🏻‍🎓Lim & Kingminghae, 2017

— International education can be especially liberating & empowering for women. Resocialization & enhanced human capital enhance agency & mobility.

A man’s failure to do housework was found to be a strong predictor of divorce (Coontz, 2015; Frisco & Williams, 2003).

— Leinonen (2012) found that many Finnish–American couples stayed in the US for a very practical reason. Whereas the Finnish spouses were all fluent in English, very few American spouses could speak Finnish and thus had trouble finding employment in Finland.

Male Chinese international students and their wives were found to adopt a flexible approach to gender roles to support each other during their years at school (Zhang et al., 2011).

Among Thai international students in a long-distance relationship,

women are more likely to plan on staying for a longer time in the host country after graduation.

— Female international students are more inclined to work in the US after graduation because of better opportunities there compared to the graduates’ home countries (Kim et al., 2011; Zweig & Chen, 1995).

Women may also get to exercise their agency more freely given the changed constraint and opportunity structure in the host country.

§ — Philippines — Ian Salvana et al., 2022

— Since 2007, Filipino women have accounted for 70% of international agricultural workers from the Philippines (Garchitorena, 2017).

— Women represent 80% of people displaced and/or most affected by climate emergencies (IOM, 2021).

👩🏻‍🎓Female Brain Drain or Female Empowerment — Adriana Ravara, 2018

The fact that migration can be an empowering experience for women has already been empirically studied in the literature. One does not often make the immediate connection between migration and empowerment, as migration is a concept that traditionally has negative stereotypes associated to it. Nevertheless, for many women it can be a very empowering experience, in comparison to what would have been their lives had they stayed at home, particularly concerning their freedom. In this regard, several authors seem to agree that the experience of migration has different benefits for women (Kats 1982).

Kerr, 2020

America has benefitted substantially from inflows of global talent since the 1970s. The United Nations estimates about 272 million migrants globally for 2019, or about 3.5% of the world’s population, and the United States is a key destination country, home to about 19% of migrants.

This share is five times the 4.25% share of the global population living in America. Of the 50 million migrants in the United States, just over half of them are women and more than three-quarters are working age adults (UN DESA 2019).

👩🏻‍🎓OPT & Visas — Yuqi Cheng, 2020

Students pursuing degrees using F visas are eligible to work in the US for 12 months after graduation. This period is granted by the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program. During the OPT program, the employers can sponsor the immigrants for applications of H-1B work visas if they want to pursue a longer term of employment. In order words, OPT program serves as a smooth transition from being a foreign student to the US labor market. In 2008, the U.S. government extended the OPT term from 12 to 29 months for graduates of most STEM fields.

There is a 60-day grace period after graduation before which foreign students need to make a decision on whether to continue staying using OPT.

Over 80% of students eligible for OPT chose to stay initially after graduation, and a higher percentage of females stay after graduation than males.

👩🏻‍🎓Women Stay — Amelie Constant, 2019

Women immigrants in academia are less likely to return to their home country.

Investigating the return migration of foreign-born academics, who work in U.S. universities in chemistry, chemical engineering, or biochemistry, Gaule (2014) concluded that the probability of return increased when conditions in the home country improved relative to the U.S., decreased for those over age 50, & men were more likely than women to return [to their home country].
Returnees were positively self-selected in ability, but not in education and the majority of returnees took an academic position in their home country. Overall, only a small percentage of academics returned.

[Grigoleit-Richter (2017) found that STEM female immigrants in Germany were more likely to stay in Germany than return to their home country. Moreover, they established strong bonds with the community. And this was in spite of the] barriers they face in the highly gender-segregated German technology industry. Overall, high-skilled women have the tendency to stay in the host country and not return (Grigoleit-Richter, 2017).

Monti (2018) confirms that women are less prone to return.

High-skilled female migrants outnumbered males in 2010 (Kerr et al., 2016),

and they are migrating in greater proportions than comparable men and low-skilled women (IOM and OECD, 2014). Yet research on the return/repeat or onward migration of high-skilled women is undeveloped. We only have rudimentary understanding about why highly-skilled women migrate & we lack any understanding about their socio-economic behavior and their return/repeat migration patterns. Given that women make different life-course choices and follow different career trajectories than men, this can render migration policies about skilled women inadequate (IOM and OECD, 2014).

👩🏻‍🎓Women Stay — Gaule, 2014

Women are less likely to return to their home country after graduation.

“Women are 47.2% less likely to return than men.”

The results replicate research finding that women working in academia are often thought to have more constraints on mobility than men (Stephan, 2012).

The odds or returns are also significantly lower for individuals with a US degree, which is hardly surprising since those individuals have had longer migration spells.

A pillar of human and economic geography, migration used to have a unidirectional “place” component, viewed as the movement from one place (one’s homeland) to another (the host location).
[The] “time” component ranged from long-term (staying in the new place for 12+ months) to short-term (staying between 3 and 12 months).

But towards the later decades of the 20th century, scholars observed return, repeat, circular, and onward migration patterns and started theorizing about them. In the 21st century, return, repeat, and circular migration are even more pronounced, offering new time-space dynamics and intensifying research interest. Estimates (varying by host country) document that 20–75% of immigrants leave the host country within the first 5 years after arrival (OECD, 2008). For example, 40% of skilled immigrants in Canada left within 10 years after arrival, and those who arrived during recessionary periods had even higher return rates (Aydemir and Robinson, 2008).

Repeat/ Circular Migration

The return rates of international students 5 years after receiving their Ph.D. in the U.S. ranged from 25% in computer science and engineering to 49% in social sciences (Finn and Pennington, 2018).
Re-immigration or repeat migration rates in Norway were over 50% among the Pakistani immigrants who returned to Pakistan and re-immigrated to Norway (Bratsberg et al., 2007).
In Germany, over 60% of the immigrants from guestworker countries were actually repeat or circular migrants (Constant and Zimmermann, 2011) and about 80% of the migration transitions between host and home countries were about re-returning to Germany (Constant and Zimmermann, 2012).
Considerable de facto circular migration exists between Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia, or other Arab countries and the oil-rich Gulf countries (Newland, 2009).

[Overall, a substantive proportion] of international flow is by return and repeat migrants.

Onward Migration

Onward migration is not trivial either.
Of the immigrants who left Sweden, 20–28% moved onward (Nekby, 2006; Monti, 2018).
In Norway, some immigrant groups such as the Vietnamese had onward rates of 66% (Bratsberg et al., 2007).
In Canada, 37% of immigrants moved onward to the U.S. (King and Newbold, 2007).
In the U.S., about 15% of the high-skilled migrants came from a country different than their birth country (Artuç and Ozden, 2018).

While immigrants who migrate to countries with living standards similar to their homeland are more likely to return, immigrants who migrate to countries richer than their home country are more likely to migrate onwards/ stay (OECD, 2008). Forced migrants and those from politically more unstable regions also stay (Monti, 2018).

Women Stay — Monti, 2019

Women are less likely to return to their home country after graduation.

Female family migrants are slightly more likely to return [to their home country] than female labor migrants. This likelihood might be due to the fact that female family migrants move together with their male partners initially and in their eventual return.

Married individuals show lower return probabilities than singles, [though this] is mainly driven by married women showing lower return probabilities.

Return to the country of origin constitutes failed attempts to permanently settle in the host country and/or maximize financial earnings. Subsequently, in cases where economic success does not reflect one’s human capital, return is more likely. The initial selection [into the immigrant category] is, according to the neoclassical economic approach, regarded as positive in terms of skills. Thus, returning to one’s home country is then negatively selected and undergone by those who failed to fulfill their initial goals (Constant & Massey, 2002, 2003).

Not Birds of Passage — Grigoleit-Richter, 2017

— Grigoleit-Richter (2017) found that STEM female immigrants in Germany were more likely to stay in Germany than return to their home country.

Diversity Isn’t Inclusion

— The study also found that “migrant women experienced a profound disjunction between the diversity rhetoric and their daily working routine [with their] autochthonous co-workers.”

Fortunately, their “strong local attachment and sense of belonging fostered their social integration & counteracted experienced discrimination in the workplace.”

👩🏻‍🎓Intl’ Student Health & Employment — Pang et al., 2021

“Since the 1990s, China has emerged as the leading source country for international students (Tan, 2012), with significantly more Chinese students studying in Australia than any other country. It has been estimated that out of the current population of international students enrolled in higher education, around 130,000 are likely to migrate to Australia after their studies, representing almost 3% of the current population with a tertiary education in Australia (Deloitte Access Economics, 2015).

Yan (2013) [found] low levels of physical activity participation [among] Chinese students studying at American colleges and universities, with Chinese female students among the least physically active of all students.

Chen (1998) [found that] Chinese males and females [reported spending] 204 and 93 min/week (respectively) participating in physical activities.

— “The transition from high school to university marks a significant decline in physical activity levels (Bray and Born 2004; Kwan et al. 2012).”

1. There’s no class called PE anymore

2. There’s no ‘practice’ or coach yelling at you;

It’s all on you 🏃🏻‍♀️

👩🏻‍🎓International Students’ Sexual Literacy — Baek et al., 2012

A lack of consideration of students’ religious views in sexual health programs may prevent students from participating because of feeling alienated from any initiative (Ulanowsky 1998).

Given that international students from Asian countries, including India, China, Singapore, also represents the largest number of international students in Australian tertiary institutes (Australian Education International 2010), previous studies on sexual health for international students have therefore focused mainly on Asian cohorts (Burchard, Stocks & Laurence 2009; Song et al. 2005).

Previous literature has suggested that international students are likely to be exposed to sexual health risks due to poor knowledge of sexual health, lack of sex education, and different cultural & religious expectations (Burchard, Laurence & Stocks 2011; Kalsi, Do & Gu 2007; Reeders 2011; Song et al. 2005).

Chen & Liu, 2021 (just for fun 💁🏻‍♀️) [for now]

— Women are expected to get married by the age of 27 and to be subordinate to their husbands (Fincher, 2014; Gaetano, 2014).

— In comparison to their male counterparts, divorced women in China face more social pressure and discrimination, & are less likely to remarry (Ding & Xu, 2015).

— It is still rare to see Chinese man-White woman marriages in China (Pan, 2015).

— Sex before marriage is a more serious moral issue for Chinese women compared with their male counterparts (Yuxin, 2011).

— Premarital sex is still considered as immoral in the Chinese society, and women in particular are expected to preserve their virginity until marriage (Zheng et al., 2011)

Long Distance & International Students — Amelia, 2020

The precise definition of what constitutes a long-distance relationship has significantly varied among previous studies.

Defining Long Distance

The majority of studies use a “miles separated” criteria; however, the exact number of miles has varied. Schwebel et al. (1992) used 50 miles or more in their study, whereas Lydon, Pierce, and O’Regan (1997) and Knox et al. (2002) used 200 miles or more to define a long-distance relationship.

Amelia (2020) only focused on the long-distance relationship between two countries to see the experiences when relationships take place in different environments. Many studies of long-distance relationships tend to focus on quantified topics that only bring us to the basic ideas of the long-distance relationships such as the perceptions (Skinner, 2005), commitment (Lydon, Pierce, & O’Regan, 1997), idealization (Stafford & Reske, 1990), and personal career development (Gerstel & Gross, 1984).

In the largest study about a long-distance relationship, Guldner (2003) compared couples in a long-distance relationship with those in the close-distance relationship resulted in four different measures: satisfaction, commitment, intimacy, and trust.

Difficulties

When it comes to difficulties within a long-distance relationship,

women are more likely to blame the relationship, while men tend to focus on external factors (Guldner, 1996).

When it comes to a long-distance relationship, laying blame on the distance for the breakdown of the relationship more often than not facilitates an amicable break-up (Guldner, 1996), but it also leads many people to believe that long-distance relationship simply does not work (Guldner, 1996; The Center for the Study of Long Distance Relationships, 2004).

Dansie (2012) states that as many as 75% of college students are or will eventually be in a long-distance relationship relying on various communication technologies to connect with their partner.

Stafford & Merolla (2007) studied that college students in a long-distance relationship are more stable than those in a geographically close-distance relationship. Therefore, the long-distance relationship can be maintained, but it is little known about how they are saved.

Ruble (1996) said that individuals’ attitudes about trust come from their romantic past and from observing their parent’s relationships when they are young.

Female Brain-Drain or Female Empowerment — Adriana Ravara, 2018

Women make up most of the high-skilled workers in OECD countries, a trend that has been on the rise since the 1980s. Dr. Adriana Ravara’s analysis of 193 countries from 1980 to 2010 found that

women migrate more than men due to the cultural impositions of gender roles on their freedom.

Ultimately, it is argued that fleeing human rights violations’ is empowering those who would be powerless at home: women.

This → Irish Women’s Immigration

Indeed, the aspect of women migrating to flee their restrictions and lack of prospects at home is older than what history normally acknowledges, starting as early as modern migration surged in the mid-19th century, exemplified by the Irish mass migration. Indeed, this is one of the most famous migratory movements in history, but one of its important aspects is not 19 so often mentioned: migrants were predominantly women, young and single. As the century progressed such migration could be classified as a “female mass movement” (Diner 1983:4).

Adding to Ireland’s situation at the time: poverty, landlessness, which eventually culminated in the great famine, the system of single inheritance and single dowry, paved the way for the country “to become the home of the unmarried and the late-married” (Diner 1983:4).

These social and economic imbalances made Ireland a country that “held out fewer and fewer attractions to women” (Diner 1983:4). Women were faced with a situation where they had little marriage options or employment and therefore had to stay in the countryside with their families. In order to escape from their families or spinsterhood, their options were either joining a religious order or emigration. This brought about a kin chain migration, where women brought their sisters, mothers, nieces, aunts and friends.
Overall, the author described Irish female migration more beneficial in comparison to the option of staying home, [consistent with] the findings of Kats (1982).

Other more recent studies portray a similar reality, where migration seemed to provide women with higher benefits than men.

Jamaica → London

Pedrazza (1991) reports the immigration of Jamaican women in London and described that as difficult as had been these women’s migration experience, that it had been far more positive than for men: “as it allowed women to break with traditional roles and patterns of dependence and assert a new-found (if meager) freedom” Pedrazza (1991, p. 19).

Dominican Republic → USA

Pessar (1984) documents labour-migrant women from Dominican Republic to the US and reports that important effects in the women’s livelihoods.

Overall migration helped women to reverse patriarchal roles, to heighten women’s selfesteem, and their new income gave these women the ability to participate in the household decision-making, securing and actualizing their roles. Overall, provided that women join the workforce, an option that might have been unavailable for many in their origin-country, and by being exposed with different gender norms abroad, women migrants are often able to change their gender roles within their households, and even stand up for themselves on issues such as domestic violence (Ramirez et al., 2005).

Giddens (1992): a pure relationship “entered into for its own sake, for what can be derived by each person from a sustained association with another, & which is continued only so far as it is thought by both parties to deliver enough satisfaction for each to stay within it.”

The Data

The CIRI Human Rights Dataset contains standards-based quantitative information on government respect for 15 internationally recognized human rights for 202 countries, annually from 1981–2011. It is designed for use by scholars and students who seek to test theories about the causes and consequences of human rights violations, as well as policy makers and analysts who seek to estimate the human rights effects of a wide variety of institutional changes and public policies including democratization, economic aid, military aid, structural adjustment, and humanitarian intervention.

.All data and documentation for the final version of the CIRI Human Rights Dataset can be found at the CIRI Human Rights Data Project Dataverse. The creation of the data and documentation was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Nos. SES — 0318273 (2004–2006), SES-0647969 (2007–2010), and SES-0647916 (2007–2010).

Cingranelli, David L., David L. Richards, and K. Chad Clay. 2014. “The CIRI Human Rights Dataset.” http://www.humanrightsdata.com. Version 2014.04.14.

Sayonara

Sayonara (1957) anchored Hollywood’s “fictionalization of Asian women deemed submissive, hyper-sexual with or without repression and oppressive elements of character, who constantly pine for male attention” (Sonia Ver, 2022).

🤖The Ubiquitous Female Voice — Zhuyue Peng (personal communication)

“I just realized how in China also, almost every app or machine that has the purpose of providing service is using female voices (or at least sets the female voice as the default option). All the virtual assisting speakers (similar to Alexa) only have female voices. The speakers on buses only use female voices. Even the AI androids in restaurants that work as waiters specifically use child-like female voices, which is not corresponding with the waiter:waitress ratio of 6:4 currently in China.”

Origin of “Birds of Passage”

In the early years of the 20th century, the United States was going through a significant period of expansion. Cities like New York, Boston, San Francisco, Philadelphia needed workers to take hard, and often dangerous, jobs of modern industry. Millions of Italian men were willing to leave home, endure harsh working conditions, and live apart from their families with the hope of earning a decent living before returning home to Italy. Before 1900, the vast majority of Italian immigrants to the U.S. were teenagers and young men; they were often called “Birds of Passage,” because so many of them never intended to stay in the United States. Between 20-to-30% of Italian immigrants during this period eventually returned to Italy after living apart from their parents, wives, and sometimes children for years.

.

Birds of Passage — Caroline Waldron Merithew, 2018 (May 23)

Bird of Passage is a term used to describe temporary migrants who move so they can fill jobs that are often viewed as beneath native-born laborers. The term was used in the United States as early as the 1840s to refer to British immigrants and remained in use through the late twentieth century to refer to Asian, European, and Latin American immigrants. The phenomenon of temporary or return migration can be traced back to the early decades of industrialization. Improvements in technology had an impact on the number of birds of passage moving to the United States and other countries that welcomed immigrants. In particular, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the steamship made travel easier and moving back and forth all the more possible. Industrial expansion, economic opportunities, and the possibility of returning to their homelands motivated birds of passage. Statistics vary depending on national origin and era; return rates could be as low as 10% or as high as 80%. Birds of passage were a crucial part of the U.S. economy during the height of mass immigration (1880–1920), when more than 20 million immigrants arrived in the United States. Before the passage of the Johnson-Reed Act in 1924, which limited the number of immigrants allowed to enter the United States, the phenomenon of birds of passage was used by both sides to argue for and against restricting immigration.

💍China & Unmarried Women — Harriet Zurndorfer, 2018

‘Better marrying well than having a successful career’ (gandehao buru jiadehao)

is an all too common piece of advice broadcast in the Chinese mainstream media (Sun & Chen, 2015, 1091).

Never-married working women and female divorcées are especially subject to gender discrimination and even ridicule. Single career women, particularly those with high incomes, age 27 or older, are labeled ‘leftover’ (shengnü), and stigmatized for their unmarried status (Ji, 2015; Gaetano, 2010; Hong Fincher, 2014). The government, the media, and even their own families mock them for being ‘too picky’ in their choice of a partner. It would seem the ideal of femininity in which women perform the roles of nurturing mothers and care-givers outweighs appreciation of the talents and worldly-skills ‘leftover women’ possess. As two Chinese sociologists observe, the expression

‘Better marrying well than having a successful career’ (gandehao buru jiadehao)

is an all too common piece of advice broadcast in the Chinese mainstream media (Sun & Chen, 2015, 1091). Statistical research demonstrates that a woman’s educational attainment has a negative effect on the timing of her marriage (Yu & Xie, 2015).

Divorced women also face derision as evidenced by the popular saying two Shanghai Fudan University sociologists evoke: ‘Divorced women are like second-hand cars, while divorced men are like second-hand apartments. Cars depreciate once used, while apartments hold their value all the same’ (Ding & Xu, 2015, 109). Their study demonstrates that divorced men do not want a divorced woman as a new partner.

Both shengnü and divorced women are subject to denigration: the former because they delay or may even shun marriage, and the latter because they are ‘used goods’.

But both groups are known to defy such disparagement, and to consider relationships and/or marriage with foreign men as a viable alternative.

Prejudice against women with PhD degrees is rife

they are often called di sanzhong (third kind of human being), meaning they are neither men nor women, and thus may be considered ‘freaks’ (Nakano, 2015, 134).

Leftover Women

The online Chinese encyclopedia Baidu baike (Baidu encyclopedia) (2012) notes that leftover women possess ‘three highs’: a high education level, a high income, and high intelligence, but remain ‘stuck’ in their single status because they are too choosy in their choice of spouse.

But leftover women are also one of the results of the one-child policy which in effect has empowered urban daughters to gain relatively easier access to higher education and even well-paid employment than earlier generations (Fong, 2002; Yun, 2016). Thus there is discrepancy between what the reform era has delivered to boost women’s position in society and the hostility toward independent single women.

In Chinese popular culture leftover women are classified into age groups and labeled with progressively pejorative terminology: those between 28 and 32 are ‘leftover fighters’ (still with a chance to find a partner); those between 32 and 35 are ‘leftover forever’ while an unmarried woman between 35 and 38 is a ‘leftover queen’ (Ding & Xu, 2015, 115).

Because many leftover women have achieved the same economic success as men, they challenge the patriarchal norms of hypergamy whereby a wife’s income is preferably less than that of her husband.

Sandy To (2015) found in her interviews with some fifty leftover women based in Shanghai and Hong Kong a common complaint that men wanted superiority in every respect — that is, a higher salary than their female partner, a more elevated job title, a higher level of education, a higher ranked school of graduation, and even a larger number of holidays allowed per annum.

Media (and Ladies Training Institutes)

The popular media underlines the importance of Chinese women’s domesticity and femininity, while paying little to no attention toward female achievement outside the home.

Nowadays, Chinese magazine advertising presents the modern twenty-first century woman as gentle, dutiful, as well as undemanding and decorous (Hung & Li, 2006). Such qualities are taught in the growing number of Ladies’ Training Institutes (shunü peixun yuan) established all over China which advocate the study of female ‘traditions’ to help cultivate lady-like demeanor and skills (Carrico, 2016).

Chinese Media on International Romance — Pan Wang, 2019

…the overwhelmingly small number of romances and marriages between Chinese men and foreign women in the PRC.

Of the Chinese–foreign marriages registered in the PRC, over 85% involve Chinese women and fewer than 15% Chinese men.

However, when taken in conjunction with the media’s positive portrayal of Chinese men who date or marry foreign women, these reports have reinforced the dichotomy of ‘bad foreign partners’ versus ‘good Chinese husbands’ in the context of Chinese–foreign romance. In doing so, Occidentalism is employed to implicitly encourage Chinese women to ‘marry in’ rather than ‘marry out’, as one possible solution to the perceived social problem of the oversupply of bachelors caused by the ‘one-child policy’.

Global Hypergamy

Chinese citizens (mostly women in their late twenties and early thirties) who dated or married foreigners were interpreted as ‘marrying up’ for social and economic gain through international marriage. These women were portrayed as using international marriage as a ‘springboard’ (tiaoban) to climb the social and economic ladder or to improve their life circumstances. Correspondingly, foreign (male) citizens were objectified as ‘passports’, ‘green cards’ and ‘flight tickets’, and they were usually portrayed as 10 to 15 years older than their Chinese partners.

Constable (2003) describes this pattern of marriage mobility as ‘global hypergamy’ in which women exchange their youth and beauty for improved social and economic status. She also pointed out the paradoxical and complex nature of such marriages, as sometimes ‘marrying up’ may essentially bring downward mobility. For instance, she points to the case of a ‘White collar’ Chinese woman with a doctorate from Shandong province marrying a truck driver with a high school degree from Washington (Constable 2003, p. 167).

👩🏻‍🎓Thai & Chinese Students— Lim & Kingminghae, 2017

Although extant research has found family critical in understanding international student mobility, studies focusing on the role of intimate relationships, such as marriage or romantic relationships, are few in number and typically with a backdrop of the Global South‐to‐North mobility pattern. Based on data collected among Thai nationals studying in Chinese universities, intimate relationships are found in this study to pull partners across borders towards each other.

This general trend nevertheless hides a stark disparity between genders in the sense that people are attracted by intimate relationships and in their mobility intentions. Contrary to popular belief, women in this study are less attached to their intimate relationships. Instead, they strategically plan on going to places where better chances for self-realization exist. By examining Thai female international students’ cross‐cultural experiences and real‐life situations, we suggest that their compatriot intimate relationships often fail them because more than their share of household chores are stuck with them, even when they study abroad. Female international students in this article are neither willingly docile nor overtly rebellious, rather, they practically maneuver and cope according to their transnational circumstances and capabilities.

Before the constitution granting equal rights to women was promulgated in 1997, married Thai women had limited legal rights. For example, they could not purchase land except with the husbands. Some women thus prefer the de facto marriage. Even today, many Thais do not register their marriages so as to better protect their individual rights and to avoid paperwork hassles.

Some studies also mentioned that in deciding work locations, child-raising/education is very important for the graduating couple, on top of balancing dual careers (Cheung & Xu, 2015; Geddie, 2013). It could well be the case that when the partners in our study have children, women are more attached or pulled to her nuclear family, as suggested by some studies on international marriages of Thai women, for example, Jongwilaiwan and Thompson (2013).

Frejka et al., 2018👶🏻

“The second half of the gender revolution has the potential for raising the prevalence of marriages, diminishing the frequency of divorces, and, the focus of this analysis, raising fertility, trends that perhaps are already underway. Goldscheider et al. (2015: 229) have proposed that “… men’s increased involvement in the home, the second half of the gender revolution … has the promise of increasing both fertility and the proportions entering and remaining in committed unions.”

Japanese Couples’ Division of Labor — Hertog et al., 2021

Women’s domestic work time dwarfs men’s, and there is some variation by day of the week and education.

On weekdays, domestic work is almost exclusively the domain of women.

On weekends, we find evidence of compensatory behaviors for both men and women. Men, especially those with university education, catch up on all types of unpaid work while women, especially those with tertiary education, catch up on unpaid work mostly by spending more time caring for children. Regarding the family balance in sharing domestic labor, men increase their time on unpaid work on weekends proportionately more than women do.

Consequently, within couples, wives’ share of all types of unpaid work is around 10% smaller on weekends compared to weekdays.

In couples where wives have tertiary education, there is an additional reduction by several percentage points in their weekend share of domestic work time compared to weekdays. Our findings suggest that Japanese men’s long work hours contribute to gender inequality in domestic work participation. We also find that university education is associated with more equal sharing of domestic workload, indicating that socialization may play a role in bringing about greater egalitarianism in the domestic sphere in the future.

24 Countries — Man-Yee Kan & Kamila Kolpashnikova, 2021

A more egalitarian outlook translated into less housework for women and more housework for men, and the association was stronger in the regions that were undergoing the transitional period. Using the ISSP data for 24 countries, we find that egalitarian attitudes are tied with more egalitarian housework division for both women and men.

Women with more egalitarian views do significantly less housework, and more egalitarian men do more.

The overall pattern also shows the evidence of the lagged adaptation for more traditional women and men, compared to their more gender-egalitarian counterparts (Gershuny et al., 2005). Thus, the gains in higher housework participation can be observed among women and men with higher levels of egalitarian views, whereas for more traditional men such a trend is not evident.

Even in countries of the East Asian region, where a more traditional division of housework is often reported, our findings discern the harbingers of the transitional stage.

Although nowadays women still undertake more housework than men (e.g., Gershuny, 2000; Heisig, 2011; Hook, 2006; Hook, 2010; Kan, 2008a; Kan and He, 2018; Kan and Laurie, 2018; Kan et al., 2011; Kolpashnikova, 2018; Kolpashnikova and Kan, 2020), they are less confined to the traditional roles of the gendered housework division than before as revealed in the gradual reduction in their domestic work time over the years (Gershuny, 2000; Heisig, 2011; Hertog et al., 2021; Hook, 2006; Hook, 2010; Sullivan et al., 2018). Recent research generated more evidence that the housework share of women and men in heterosexual couples was converging in the industrial countries, albeit only slowly and intermittently (Altintas and Sullivan, 2017; Kan et al., 2011; Sullivan et al., 2018). Scholars proposed that these changes in gender relations were a part of the Second Demographic Transition (SDT) (Lesthaeghe, 2010; van de Kaa, 2002), which also brought about the lowest fertility rates in history, increasing proportions of the elderly, and higher numbers of divorces. EspingAndersen and Billari (2015) argued that the initial shockwave of the gender revolution and the departure from the traditional man-breadwinner woman-homemaker family specialization model brought about the decline in fertility, an increase in divorce rates, and above all, a realignment in gender relations at home. With time, new more egalitarian gender arrangements take root in the everyday lives of families because societies start to settle into the new equilibrium of non-traditional family forms when gender-egalitarian family arrangements are adopted by a critical mass of people and egalitarianism becomes normalized (Sullivan et al., 2018).

25 counties — Unpaid Care — Naomi Lightman & Claire Link, 2021

Women spend significantly more time than men on unpaid caring activities internationally, with estimates typically ranging from 2 to 4 times greater time investment (Ferrant et al., 2014; Dong & An, 2015; Hagqvist, 2018).

Both eldercare and childcare have a negative impact on women’s economic outcomes, yet the effects of both types of unpaid care vary across class.

Overall, childcare has a larger impact for women in lower income households, while eldercare has a larger impact for women in higher income households.

However, the wage penalties experienced by wealthier women due to either type of potential care responsibilities are considerably less than those experienced by women in poorer households. Together, these data suggest that unpaid resident caregiving has effects that are both highly gendered and highly classed, leading to intersectional disadvantages for women performing unpaid care within poorer households across countries, and with effects that, in some cases, are further amplified within low-GDP countries.

Racial Differences in the Motherhood Wage Penalty — Jiaqi Li, 2022

“The impact of childbirth on labor income is around 30% for White women but only around 10% for Black women”

(RND) Marriage Package — Frejka et al., 2010 — East Asian Childbearing

Marriage is the Gatekeeper to Childbearing

In 2007, 98.5% of births in South Korea and 99% in Singapore “were to legally married couples (Lee & Sam-Sik, 2009; Koh, 2010),” and 98–99% of births in Japan have been to married couples since about 1970 (Rindfuss et al., 2004)” (Frejka et al., 2010).

The removal altogether of an increasing proportion of women from the childbearing population as a result of non-marriage, and the late initiation of childbearing because of delayed marriage, have been key factors in fertility declines in the region. While cohabitation is becoming more widely accepted, at least in Japan (Raymo et al., 2008), childbearing within cohabiting relationships remains rare, and unless and until normative changes make inroads into this rarity, marriage will remain the gatekeeper into the possibility of childbearing in the region.

Interracial History & Sustained Preference (Developing Data)

Monoracial Minority Subjects

Among minorities (N = 181) whose longest relationship was with someone of the same race (n = 111), most (95.5%) were currently in a monoracial relationship.

Among monoracial minorities whose longest relationship was interracial (n = 70), most (75.7%) were currently in an interracial relationship. About half (50%) were either still with the same person they indicated their longest relationship was with or were interracially dating someone of the same race as that person.
— Interestingly, among those who were dating someone of a different race than their longest interracial lover, 48.6% were in monoracial relationships, and 51.4% (n = 18) were interracially dating someone from a new background. Of those subjects, 8 of them were interracially dating someone White.

White Subjects

Among White subjects (N = 37) whose longest relationship was with someone of the same race (n = 19), all were currently in a monoracial relationship.

Among White subjects whose longest relationship was interracial (n = 18), most (88.9%) were currently in an interracial relationship. Most (66.7%) were either still with the same person they indicated their longest relationship was with or were interracially dating someone of the same race as that person.

Haafu (Torngren & Okamura, 2020)

[“assume direct quotes”]

— Haafu refers to persons with phenotypical features indicating white Caucasian roots (Okamura, 2017).
— E.g., Ariana Miyamoto’s (Blasian) crowning as Miss Japan in 2015, and the surge of strong reactions directed towards her not being Japanese enough (e.g., Fackler, 2015)… …vs stores in Japan running a ‘This is Japan’ campaign featuring White multiracial and multiethnic Japanese as a bridge between Japan and the rest of the world.

Around 2% of newborn babies born in Japan were classified as mixed in 2016,

with a father or a mother who is of Chinese, Filipino, Korean, or American* nationality.”

*American = East/SE Asian, Black, Hispanic, Indian, Multiracial, Native American, Persian, White, etc

Today, haafu is not only the dominant word for people perceived as racially mixed, but has become a synonym for ‘exotic’, especially ‘part Caucasian’ or ‘Eurasian’ in the fashion and entertainment worlds. However, it is an admiration of physical appearance derived only from certain racial and ethnic backgrounds [White], and only as an exotic symbol and token, and a target of consumption.

Social Utilitarianism Example

In the days following Pearl Harbor, there was a significant increase in the proportion of Japanese-Americans choosing a White American first name for their children (Martin Saavedra, 2018, 2021).

Sidenotes

Mexican Segregation (Jennifer Nájera, 2015)

“Throughout much of the twentieth century, Mexican Americans experienced segregation in many areas of public life, but the structure of Mexican segregation differed from the strict racial divides of the Jim Crow South. Factors such as higher socioeconomic status, lighter skin color, and Anglo cultural fluency allowed some Mexican Americans to gain limited access to the Anglo power structure. Paradoxically, however, this partial assimilation made full desegregation more difficult for the rest of the Mexican American community, which continued to experience informal segregation long after federal and state laws officially ended the practice.

Nájera shows how the ambiguous racial status of Mexican origin people allowed some of them to be exceptions to the rule of Anglo racial dominance. She demonstrates that while such exceptionality might suggest the permeability of the color line, in fact the selective and limited incorporation of Mexicans into Anglo society actually reinforced segregation by creating an illusion that the community had been integrated and no further changes were needed. Nájera also reveals how the actions of everyday people ultimately challenged racial/racist ideologies and created meaningful spaces for Mexicans in spheres historically dominated by Anglos.

“Mexicans experienced segregation in a manner similar to Blacks and other people of color in the United States.

Even if state and local courts ruled against the legality of racial segregation, Anglo-run school districts and other government entities successfully enacted de facto policies of segregation throughout the U.S. Southwest.

Sam Houston elementary school was the town’s segregated Mexican school that served students through the 3rd grade. Oftentimes skin color was a determining factor in whether or not children of Mexican origin were placed in segregated schools or, in this case, the A or B tracks (1993).

The separate and unequal practices of education for Mexican students reinforced the belief that Mexican students were racially inferior to their White counterparts. Mexican and Black children were systemically segregated in La Feria.

La Feria’s original “Mexican School,” Sam Houston Elementary School, remained segregated until 1972.”

Miyawaki, 2015

“Ethnoracial categories are malleable and can change over time. The boundaries of whiteness expanded in the past to include groups previously considered nonwhite, such as the Irish, Italians, & Eastern European Jews (Alba, 1985; Brodkin, 1998; Ignatiev, 1995).”

“Marriages involving part-white multiracial Americans and whites accounted for a quarter of all interracial marriages in 2000 (Lee and Edmonston 2005).

“According to the 2008–2012 American Community Survey, “54.1% of black/whites, 72.8% of American Indian/whites, and 69.1% of Asian/whites have a white spouse.”

.

🎮❤️Tracy McVeigh, 2016

— Japan’s govt found 30% of single women & 15% of single men ages 20–29 admitted to having fallen in love with a meme or character in a videogame; — Higher than the 24% of those women & 11% of men who admitted to falling in love with a pop star or actor.

The Great Salary Convergence — Aki Ito, 2022 (August 8)

“Paying people based on where they live never made a ton of sense, but it’s the way salaries have always worked.

But now, a seismic shift is taking place in the way Americans get paid. Early in the coronavirus pandemic, remote workers who fled the expensive coasts were allowed to keep their big-city paychecks, and new data suggests that it’s becoming a new & permanent norm.

the widespread shift from local hiring to national hiring

As companies routinely hire for remote roles in cities and towns far beyond their headquarters, white-collar salaries across the country are getting tantalizingly close to those in San Francisco.

Pre-Pandemic, tech startups made 65% of their hires in the state where they were headquartered and 35% out-of-state. But today, those ratios have flipped: 38% of hires are in-state and 62% are out-of-state.

And it’s not just tech: The Great Salary Convergence (the widespread shift from local hiring to national hiring) is playing out across the white-collar workforce, Ito writes.

Since the end of 2019, more than a dozen other metropolitan areas have seen pay jumps in the double digits. In San Jose, meanwhile, white-collar salaries in the heart of Silicon Valley have barely budged, increasing by a measly 1.7%.

Part of the reason salaries in smaller cities are rising to Silicon Valley levels is the flood of remote workers who arrived during the pandemic.

Local rents began to soar — which forced local employers to raise wages.

Jay Denton sees this dynamic at play in the average salaries of more than 100 jobs that make up a typical workforce.

Nationally, salaries for those jobs have risen 7.5% since the end of 2019 — more than four times as fast as paychecks in Silicon Valley.”

https://www.businessinsider.com/great-salary-convergence-remote-work-professional-pay-tech-silicon-valley-2022-8

🕵🏻‍♀️Perhaps we should assess monoracial-monoracial interracial marriage patterns separately from #multiracial-monoracial.

Curington et al., 2020

Greater numbers of mixed-race people willing to cross racial lines in the area of marriage, dating and childbearing (Alba and Nee 2003; Lee and Bean 2004; Littlejohn 2019; Qian and Lichter 2004, 2011).

Indeed, intimate desirability hierarchies around dating and marriage are one of the most long-standing racial divides in the USA (Davis 2010; Livingston and Brown 2017).

Women of immigrant origin who may view intermarriage with Whites as a strategy for assimilation (Vasquez-Tokos 2017, 2015).

The decision of whom to date and marry has historically been more consequential in terms of social status for women than for men (Coontz, 2006).

Over 80% of multiracial Americans report white as part of their ethnic composition and 93% report being biracial (CensusScope, 2014).

Asian Multiracials

17% of the US Asian population is #Multiracial (Pew Research Center )

Blasians — Lauren Davenport, 2018

#Blasians are among the fastest growing interminority multiracials

Statues

“In nearly every country in the world, women only make up 2–3% of the public statues” (Gillie & Marc, 2019).

About 68% of male statues are named whereas 64% of female statues are nameless (Katey Goodwin, 2021; Pack & Send, 2020).

History

The genetic necessity of exogamous copulation was recognized at least 34,000 thousand years ago (Sikora et al., 2017). This practice meant either the son or daughter had to marry outside of the immediate group, & the male-kin security system of patrilineality resulting from musculoskeletal dimorphism determined that the daughter would be the one to marry exogamously, which resulted in the norm of patrilocal marriage.

The influence of this logic is demonstrated by the finding that patrilocal marriage has been found in 75% of human groups (Divale & Harris, 1976; Seielstad et al., 1998).

Having women move to their husband’s location weakened women’s natal bonds & kin networks which undermined female resistance given that non-familial female group cohesion is harder to develop than familial male group cohesion.

Transracial Adoptees — Sarah Gray, 2021

— “Some transracial adoptees feel a lack of cultural connection to their heritage community due to the inability to speak the language after being raised in English-speaking American homes (Brocious, 2017)”

— “Samuels (2009) found that #multiracial adult TRAs reported being taught by their White adoptive parents to deal with racism passively by classifying racist slurs as regular name-calling & excusing racists who committed discriminatory acts as imperfect individuals.”

“Norms about parenting have been shifting in the direction of increasing gender equalities in the past decades” (Houdt et al., 2019).

Hetherington et al. (2002)

- It’s worst for kids to be exposed to an unhappy marriage; better off if parents divorce

Kids with unmarried parents experience more family instability (Kennedy & Bumpass, 2008).

The well-being of adults is lowest when happily married parents divorce & when unhappily married parents don’t divorce (Amato et al., 1995).

“US birthrates have been falling for the past 30 years as people get married later in life and put off having children. In 1990 there were about 71 births per year for every 1,000 women age 15 to 44. By 2019 that had dropped closer to 58 births, according to a Census Bureau analysis. At the same time, the share of women age 25 to 34 who don’t have kids reached a record in 2018, the most recent available in data going back to 1976.”

Full Time Divorce — Alexandra Killewald, 2016

Husbands’ lack of full-time employment is associated with 33% higher risk of divorce, but neither wives’ full-time employment nor wives’ share of household labor is associated with divorce risk. Expectations of wives’ homemaking may have eroded, but the husband breadwinner norm persists.

🔱 Triton Pride: First Day of School at UCSD (Erika Johnson, 2022)

Today marks the first day of classes at UC San Diego, and the campus is abuzz. Students have settled into their suites, made new connections during Triton Weeks of Welcome and are now ready to embark on a new year of learning.

“Curious minds choose UC San Diego to explore its many exceptional pathways to career success, personal enrichment and lifelong satisfaction. They come not just to learn, but to practice making a positive impact on the world around them. Triton scholars enjoy unfettered access to world-renowned faculty, cutting-edge facilities and our diverse and inclusive learning community, where everyone is valued, celebrated and supported to thrive. We welcome our new cohort of curious Tritons, and we look forward to watching their diverse talents and ambitions enhance our campus community and change the world beyond,” said Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla. “

Generation Z: unafraid to speak up

UC San Diego’s newest Tritons range in age from 15 to 65, with 85% of admitted students spanning age 15 to 20. Many are part of Generation Z, those born in the mid to late 1990s. They are spirited social justice advocates, independent thinkers and the first generation to have grown up with access to the Internet from the moment they were born.

“My generation is very progressive,” said Young. “We have learned how to hold each other and ourselves accountable and reject the idea of conforming to traditional standards. Instead, we celebrate our differences.”

Easter echoed his comment, explaining that her generation has learned from the past and has become more socially aware at a younger age. “We do a lot of amazing things because our hearts are in the right place. We’re so powerful and ready for change, ready to take all the bad, the ugly and the crazy and flip it into something that’s positive.”

Many members of Generation Z have a strong drive to achieve justice and equality, which comes as no surprise considering what has shaped their generation thus far. In the mid-1990s, a technological revolution was spurred by the birth of Amazon, Google and the iPhone. In 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S. spurred numerous wars in the Middle East. A few years later, Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, just one of many natural disasters to happen in the decades to come, and America elected its first African American president. By 2019, social and political unrest reached a tipping point with the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, followed closely by the death of George Floyd and millions joining the Black Lives Matter movement.

When asked about their top values, UC San Diego’s incoming students’ responses included compassion and respect, family and integrity, as well as empathy and faith. The sentiment of slowing down, appreciating one another and demonstrating love for fellow humans appeared as a unifying theme.

As students commence their classes today, they will begin to be introduced to new concepts, meet people with completely different worldviews and challenge their own identity. These small moments of eureka will add up, growing each scholar into a bold changemaker who is ready to go into the world to make a positive difference upon graduation.

  • Students completed an average of 21 honors courses throughout their high school career.
  • The top five departmental areas among the campus’s admitted students are biology, economics, psychology, political science and mathematics.
  • Undergraduate admitted students represent more than 110 countries, including all 50 U.S. states and eight U.S. territories.
  • UC San Diego’s admitted transfer students come from 113 California Community Colleges across the state.

Until 1977, German women needed their husbands’ permission to be employed as civil servants (von Wahl, 1999, p. 123).

— Until the 1980s, American female flight attendants were required to be single when they were hired & could be fired if they married (World Bank, 2012, p.58).

— A Spanish church in 1943 decreed that “no decent woman or girl is ever seen on a bicycle” (Michener, 1968).

Transfer — Chronicle of Higher Education, Ascendium, et al., 2022

Why don’t more students transfer?

While the transfer process from a two-year institution to a four-year institution has worked well for some students, a large portion of those enrolled in these institutions face many headaches and barriers that affect their ability to transfer in a timely and cost-effective manner.

According to the Community College Research Center of Columbia University, only 14 out of every 100 community-college students who aspire to earn a bachelor’s degree will end up doing so.

4.5 Million Community College Students

What if most of today’s 4.5 million community-college students who intended to transfer to four-year colleges actually did? That would be a winning proposition all around.

It would increase those students’ odds of having satisfying and lucrative careers. It would give four-year colleges a much-needed enrollment boost when demographic trends are working against them. It would give society more better-educated and financially stable citizens. And America’s more than 1,100 community colleges would improve their reputations as engines of social mobility and success. That would bolster their enrollment, which has suffered even more during the Covid-19 pandemic than enrollments at four-year colleges.

Sadly, higher education is seeing losses, not wins, in all of those columns. This explainer examines the reasons and the costs, looks at some strategies to improve the situation, and introduces three students who managed to transfer despite the obstacles.

What Are Transfer Numbers Like Now?

“Transfer outcomes have been unacceptably low for decades,” says Tania LaViolet, director of bachelor’s attainment for the College Excellence Program of the Aspen Institute. Covid-era statistics, she says, indicate “bad layered on top of bad.”

How bad? More than 80% of community-college students intend to transfer to four-year colleges, researchers have estimated. But according to figures issued by the Community College Research Center of Columbia University’s Teachers College in 2021, of 100 degree-seeking community-college students, about 31% were transferring to a four-year college and only 14% earned a bachelor’s degree within six years. Within those underwhelming figures loomed even-worse indications of inequity. White students were transferring at twice the rate of their Black and Latino/a classmates, and higher-income students at twice the rate of their lower-income classmates.

The pandemic has worsened the situation. Community-college enrollments overall have plummeted by roughly a fifth since 2020, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, and between spring of 2020 and spring of 2022, transfer rates from community colleges to four-year colleges decreased by 11.5%. Janet L. Marling, executive director of the National Institute for the Study of Transfer Students at the University of North Georgia, says that students older than 21 and students from underrepresented minority groups continue to struggle particularly with transfer during the pandemic. She also worries about re-engaging students who stopped out during the last few years.

What Are Some Common Hurdles?

Transfer numbers were disappointing pre-pandemic because transfer processes have been, by and large, dysfunctional. Often, credits don’t transfer, and even when they do, they don’t necessarily count toward students’ intended majors. Financial aid isn’t consistently available, and when it is, it requires slogging through complicated paperwork. Four-year colleges don’t offer the same convenience and flexibility as two-year colleges in location and scheduling options. And students who do transfer sometimes experience “transfer shock,” feeling out of place, unwelcome, and academically and socially adrift.

The Covid-19 crisis added further challenges and complications. Early in the pandemic, jobs dried up, making college even less affordable while family responsibilities multiplied because of remote schooling, limited or no child and elder care, and spikes in illnesses and deaths. Computer and Wi-Fi access and cost presented additional burdens.

10.10 Update — Rebuilding Department Culture (Chronicle of Higher Education)

After a period of so much isolation and fracture, faculty members all need to feel like a valuable part of their academic homes.

Building academic culture has always required sustained and intentional effort, but Covid has made the task more complicated than ever. Nowadays, with fewer restrictions from federal agencies like the CDC, our responses to living and working in a world with Covid are more individualized. Some people are happy to meet in groups and travel, while others prefer to continue keeping their Covid bubbles small. Meanwhile, remote work and hybrid meetings are very likely here to stay. People expect — and many need — more flexibility in where and when they work.

So where does that leave the workplace culture of academic departments? In need of some serious brainstorming — especially among chairs and other academic leaders. Here are some do’s and don’ts:

  • Anything is better than nothing. At this point, what you do to rebuild work relationships and campus culture is less important than that you do something. People in the workplace are looking for a sign that leadership is thinking of them and that they are valued as people rather than just as workers. With that in mind, don’t aim for perfection. Just act.
  • Use existing meetings to strengthen relationships. Lack of time is a key barrier to building department culture. So don’t just organize a slew of new events. See if you can borrow a few minutes from (or add to) existing meetings for culture-building. For example, set aside 10 minutes of each faculty meeting for a department member to share a research or teaching effort they are passionate about.

Continue reading:10 Ways to Rebuild Department Culture,” by Trisalyn Nelson

Share your suggestions for the newsletter with Denise Magner, an editor at The Chronicle, at denise.magner@chronicle.com.

Numbers: The Universal Language (Anand Jagatia, 2019) [November 22]

Nearly all cultures today use the same decimal, or base-10, number system, which arranges the digits 0–9 into units, tens and hundreds, and so on.

in English, words like “twelve” or “eleven” don’t give many clues as to the structure of the number itself (these names actually come from the Old Saxon words ellevan and twelif, meaning “one left” and “two left”, after 10 has been subtracted).

Contrast this with Mandarin Chinese, where the relationship between the tens and the units is very clear. Here, 92 is written jiǔ shí èr, which translates as “nine ten two”. Japanese and Korean also use similar conventions, where larger numbers are created by compounding the names for smaller ones. Psychologists call systems like these “transparent”, where there is an obvious and consistent link between numbers and their names.

How language shapes our math ability

There’s growing evidence that the transparency of a counting system can affect the way we process numbers. For example, children who count in East Asian languages may have a better understanding of the base-10 system.

In one study, first-grade children were asked to represent numbers like 42 using blocks of tens and units. Those from the US, France or Sweden were more likely to use 42 individual unit blocks, while those from Japan or Korea were more likely to use four blocks of ten and two single-unit blocks, which suggests that the children’s early mental representation of numbers may have been shaped by their language.

Of course, there are many other reasons why children from different countries might have different mathematical abilities, including how maths is taught and attitudes towards education. It’s normally hard to control for these factors when studying people from different cultures — but one language offers a fascinating solution.

Numbers in the modern Welsh system are very transparent. Now, 92 is naw deg dau, or “nine ten two”, much like the system used in East Asian languages. In the older, traditional system, (which is still used for dates and ages), 92 is written dau ar ddeg a phedwar ugain, or “two on ten and four twenty”. The new system was actually created by a Welsh Patagonian businessman for accounting purposes, but it was eventually introduced into Welsh schools in the 1940s.

In Wales today, about 80% of pupils are taught maths in English, but 20% are taught in modern Welsh. This provides the perfect opportunity to experiment with children who learn maths in different languages, but study the same curriculum, and who are from a similar cultural background, to see if the East Asian style counting system really is more effective than the ones we use in the West.

Six-year-old children taught in Welsh and English were tested on their ability to estimate the position of two-digit numbers on a blank number line, labelled “0” on one end and “100” on the other. Both groups performed the same on tests of general arithmetic but the Welsh children did better on the estimation task.

“We think that it’s because the Welsh medium children had a somewhat more precise representation of two-digit numbers,” says Ann Dowker, lead author on the study and experimental psychologist at the University of Oxford. “They may have had a greater understanding of the relationships between numbers, how large they are relative to other numbers.”

The fact that they were the same in every other aspect shows you that it’s the language that is making the difference.
— Iro Xenidou-Dervou”

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Math & Language — Miura et al., 1993

— “Asian superiority in math has been observed as early as the middle of the 1st grade (Song & Ginsburg, 1987; Stevenson et al, 1990).

— There is strong evidence that the cognitive representation of numbers differs based on language.”

11.6 Update

Frequency of Kissing — Allendorf & Ghimire, 2013

The concept of marital quality can vary across time and place with some aspects of marital quality applying to some places or groups, but not to others. For example, the Dyadic Adjustment Scale developed in reference to an American sample poses the frequency of kissing as an aspect of marital quality, but Shek and Cheung (2008) suggest that kissing is not a sign of marital satisfaction in China.

Similarly, Lee and Ono (2008) suggest that a good marriage in Japan is commonly understood as one in which the husband works and the wife does not, while the husband’s ability to support his wife is not as important in the conception of a good marriage in the United States.

🌈👩‍👩‍👧Jiri Ammer, 2017 — ROPA Strategy

— Pelka (2009) found that IVF co-mothers experience less parental jealousy than other same-sex female couples because one woman is the genetic mother (she provides her eggs) & one woman is the biological mother (she gives birth to the child).

Wife 2’s Egg & Wife 1’s Gestation — Reception of Partner’s Oocytes Method — Brandao et al., 2022

Female couples have the possibility of sharing biological motherhood through a method called recepción de ovocitos de pareja (ROPA, in the Spanish acronym; in English, reception of partner’s oocytes), or lesbian shared IVF. This consists of an IVF in which the oocytes of one of them (“donor” or “genetic mother”) are fertilized with donated sperm and the resulting embryo is transferred to the other member of the couple (“recipient” or “gestational mother”).

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Dr. Jarryd Willis PhD
Dr. Jarryd Willis PhD

Written by Dr. Jarryd Willis PhD

I'm passionate about making a tangible difference in the lives of others, & that's something I have the opportunity to do a professor & researcher.