# **{Figure 4 here}**

In absolute terms, however, the number of female migrants in all regions but South Asia rose. Despite the high-income Middle East and North Africa region hosting fewer women than men, the region experienced the largest rise in the number of female migrants (up 3.5 million or 540 percent) over the period. Other regions that experienced large increases in the number of female migrants include the United States (up 12.1 million or 228 percent); Western Europe (11.2 million, 190 percent); and Australia, New Zealand, and Canada (3 million, 130 percent). The biggest absolute decline in the numbers of female migrants between 1960 and 2000 was in South Asia (down 3 million or 40 percent). In 2000, the countries with the highest proportion of female migrants were Nepal (70 percent), Mauritius (63 percent), and Moldova (60 percent).

In terms of emigrant stocks in 1960, only two regions sent higher numbers of women abroad relative to men, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada and Eastern Europe and Central Asia (figure 5). They did so again in 2000, along with Western Europe, East Asia and Pacific, and Japan. In percentage terms, the ratio of female to male emigrants declined slightly in the United States; Australia, New Zealand, and Canada; and Eastern Europe and Central Asia and more substantially in South Asia (9.6 percent) and in both Middle East and North Africa regions (high income, 6.2 percent; low-income, 7.8 percent). The four regions that experienced the greatest increases also experienced the largest increase in women as a share of their total immigrant stocks: East Asia and Pacific (17.9 percent), Japan (15.5 percent), Sub-Saharan Africa (15.4 percent), and Latin America and the Caribbean (6.9 percent). In absolute terms, all regions of the world sent more women abroad in 2000 than in 1960. The largest proportional increase was from Latin America and the Caribbean (up 10.9 million or 630 percent), followed by the highincome Middle East and North Africa region (500,000, 290 percent), the low-income Middle East and North Africa region (3.3 million, 250 percent), Japan (330,000, 210 percent), East Asia and the Pacific (6.3 million, 180 percent), and Sub-Saharan Africa (4.4 million, 180 percent). In 2000, the countries with the highest proportion of women in their emigration stocks were Ukraine (61 percent), the Philippines (60 percent), and Singapore (60 percent).

# _V. CONCLUSION_

This article draws on the largest collection of censuses and population registers providing information on international bilateral migration and constructs consistent square matrices for the last five completed census rounds (1960 to 2000). Problems in the underlying data that confound meaningful comparisons include differences in recording and recoding practices among destination countries and missing and omitted data.

The main contribution of this article is in recognizing and overcoming these obstacles by making a series of simplifying assumptions. Tradeoffs between pragmatism and accuracy are inevitable, and one of the largest hurdles is establishing a set of rules for achieving a fixed set of countries. Researchers face daunting challenges when working with migration data, and any attempt to resolve them will inevitably fall short of the 24