Thiruvananthapuram: Congress leader and Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor has expressed concern over a World Bank report that says Keralam residents who migrate to Saudi Arabia for work, return with a more conservative mindset, particularly towards violence against women.
The World Bank paper, which was published in March 2022, but went largely unnoticed and unreported till now, states that Saudi returnees tended to exhibit extreme attitudes relating to physical violence against women. Tharoor expressed concerns about the findings and called for dialogue with the Muslim community after it was highlighted by several prominent personalities
Keralam migrants returning from Saudi Arabia were significantly more conservative than non-migrants on several measures of gender attitudes, including attitudes towards gender-based violence, household decision-making and extreme gender norms, the research paper has found.
Tharoor called the findings “disturbing reports” and warned about the import of “conservative and even reactionary attitudes and customs from abroad”.
The paper examined the transfer of gender norms and whether exposure to more conservative societies might influence attitudes among migrants after they return to the state, as reported by India Today.
The MP was reacting to a post by Milan Vaishnav, Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who shared the World Bank’s policy research working paper. The paper is titled Beyond Money: Does Migration Experience Transfer Gender Norms? Empirical Evidence from Kerala, India.
Pointing to Keralam’s history as a liberal and progressive practicer of Islam, particularly its record in educating Muslim women and girls, Tharoor posted: “These are disturbing reports. Kerala has long been host to a liberal, progressive practice of Islam, fully in tune with the coexistence and communal harmony prevalent across the state. Kerala is proud of its record of educating Muslim girls and women to the same levels as boys and men.”
The import of conservative attitudes and customs from abroad was at odds with Kerala’s social traditions, he added.
“The import of conservative and even reactionary attitudes and customs from abroad, as suggested by this [World Bank] report, is fundamentally at variance with what Kerala has long been about. This requires serious introspection and internal discussion within the Muslim community as well,” Tharoor said.
Shamika Ravi, member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, also reacted to the findings. The findings matched “numerous anecdotal reports from Kerala over the last 3 decades”, she said.
“These empirical findings confirm the numerous anecdotal reports from Kerala over the last 3 decades. Compared with those who have no migration experience, the attitudes of returning migrants from Saudi Arabia toward gender-based violence were more conservative by three standard deviations. This is a great cause of concern to all of us,” Shamika posted on X on Sunday.
Working Paper 9966, was authored by George Joseph, Qiao Wang, Gnanaraj Chellaraj, Emcet O Ta, Luis Andres, Syed Usman Javaid and Irudaya Rajan. Its central question was whether migration transfers not only money but also social norms and values from destination countries to the migrants’ home communities.
It used the Kerala Migration Survey 2013, conducted by the Centre for Development Studies in Thiruvananthapuram. The survey covered 14,575 households across all 14 districts and 63 taluks of Kerala (now Keralam), with information on 63,230 household members. Researchers examined three groups for their study – 256 returning migrants from Saudi Arabia, 322 returning migrants from other Gulf countries and 8,614 non-migrants.
The researchers treated Saudi Arabia separately from other Gulf countries because of its “relatively more conservative social environment, particularly concerning women’s roles”. The other Gulf group included Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the UAE.
The study measured attitudes through five broad indices: employment, general gender attitudes, household decision-making, gender-based violence and extreme gender attitudes. The differences for Saudi returnees compared with non-migrants were particularly striking.
The researchers found that Saudi returnees were 6.0 standard deviations (SD) more conservative on general gender attitudes, 2.3 SD more conservative on household decision-making, 3.0 SD more conservative on gender-based violence and 2.6 SD more conservative on extreme gender attitudes.
At the same time, they were 7.8 SD less conservative on the employment index, showing that the findings did not point to a blanket rejection of women’s participation in the workforce.
Saudi returnees tended to exhibit conservative values concerning gender-based violence and extreme attitudes relating to physical violence against women, the paper summarised.
The survey responses cited in the World Bank paper provide a clearer picture of what the researchers mean by “conservative”. Among Saudi-returnees, 43% agreed that a man has the right to beat his wife if she disobeys him. While among returnees from other Gulf countries who think the same was 37%.
On women’s mobility, 75.3% of Saudi returnees believed that if a wife or daughter moves freely outside the home, the man loses respect in the community. The figure among other Gulf returnees was 67.7%.
The study also found that 85% of Saudi returnees believed a “man who cannot control his wife” loses respect in the community, while 64.8% believed that the man should have the final word at home.
The differences were also visible in attitudes towards sexual violence. Among Saudi returnees, 53% believed that a woman or girl who goes out alone after dark is herself to blame if she is molested, while 70% believed women’s “immodest dressing” provokes men to behave badly.
The significance of the World Bank’s policy research working paper lies less in proving a simple cause-and-effect relationship between Saudi Arabia and social conservatism and more in raising a question about the non-economic consequences of migration.
Kerala’s Gulf migration story has been about economic transformation for years. Remittances have changed households, education, housing and consumption patterns. But migrants also live for years in different social and cultural environments before returning home. The World Bank study asks whether some of those experiences travel back with them.
The answer, at least for Saudi returnees and gender norms, is that “there is evidence of a significant difference in attitudes”.