Previous studies had found that gender heterogeneity matters for economic production but depends on skills, situations and occupations. An unanswered question is; under what situation does one gender type outperforms the other and how can these differences enhance development? We modelled household receipt of remittances from migrant household members and controlled for household head’s gender. The model delivered the proposition that women as heads of households have greater influence on the attraction and maintenance of remittance relations between households and their migrant members compared to men of equivalent capacity. Thus women maintain stronger ties and sustain family relations in the case of migration while spreading the migration benefits. Women’s integrative negotiation skills account for their disproportionate influence on family relations and ties. This empirical inference is drawn from estimation based on varieties of least square methods and Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition.

Jel Classification: J6

KEYWORDS: Migration, Household, Economic production