Is There a Gender Difference in Fleeing?

The paper presented in this ZEW Research Seminar asks whether gender differences in flight patterns exist. To do so, the authors build a model allowing for gender differences along three dimensions of the decision to flee: reasons to leave the home country (push factors), the risks and costs along the route (cost factors), and the factors attracting individuals to a specific destination (pull factors). For the empirical analysis, they study refugee movements by gender in 2001-2015 in Africa and Asia, thereby capturing more than 65% of global refugee flows. Their results show that gender differences exist and vary across the three dimensions: Reactions to the need to flee due to high-intensity conflict are relatively similar. However, concerning the cost dimension, male and female flight behavior differs (substantially). Further, flight patterns into neighboring countries are not gender-specific. In contrast, for non-neighboring country pairs, the authors observe different responses for males and females to various push and pull factors.