Cultural influences across time and space: do source-country gender roles affect immigrant women's paid and unpaid labour activity?

This study examines whether source-country gender roles affect the paid and unpaid (i.e., housework) labour of immigrant women in Canada. The results show that the female-male labour activity ratio and female-male secondary education ratio in source countries - two indicators of source-country gender roles - are both positively associated with immigrant women's labour supply and negatively associated with the amount of housework that they perform. Furthermore, the effect of source-country female-male labour activity on immigrant women's labour supply remains stable over time, and the effect on housework declines slightly with years after landing in Canada. The effect of source-country female-male labour activity is enhanced when immigrant couples are from the same source country, but remains significant even when immigrant wives and their husbands are from different source countries. The effect of source-country female-male secondary education is generally smaller than that of source-country female-male labour activity.

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