Women left behind (Mexico)

. . . [W]omen increase their participation and labor time in unpaid work but reduce participation and time in paid work when their husbands migrate to the United States. In other words, left-behind women become more likely to be self-employed workers and family workers in household-owned businesses. Such a shift of female labor from paid work to unpaid work is probably driven by the need to replace migrants’ labor at home. These results are in line with the literature and previous findings.

Source: "Male Migration and Female Labor Force Participation: New Evidence from the Mexican Family Life Survey" (Qing Wang, January 2013).