Impact of Male Migration on the Empowerment of Left-behind Muslim Women in Malappuram, Kerala

Migration has been projected as a force capable of developing economies of the labour exporting nations. In the past, religious orthodoxy among the Muslims in Malabar especially in the Malappuram district prevented women from obtaining higher education and finding employment which restricted their freedom and well-being. However, there have been changes in women's perspectives in reaction to changing needs and situations, for which migration and remittances made by migrants abroad have been the important contributing factors. When the male migrates, the left-behind women have to assume increased responsibilities which increases their control over household resources, mobility and decision-making power and the foreign remittances are utilised by the left-behind women to improve their quality of living, education and information. This article explores the effects of male migration and foreign remittances on the left-behind Muslim women in the Malappuram district through the lens of the Capability approach by constructing the Women’s Capability Index based on a sample survey in the Malappuram district using a Stratified Multi-stage random Sampling method. The study identifies a set of capabilities that are appropriate to the context of male migration and the consequent effect on the left behind women’s living arrangement, provides a framework for efficiently evaluating these capabilities, aggregates the capabilities into a single index, and then validates and tests the index. The Ordinal Logistic Regression, used to analyse the role of migration in the capability expansion of left-behind Muslim women shows that the foreign remittances sent by the husbands from abroad have a positive statistically significant effect on the left-behind Muslim women in the study area, implying that with the increase in the foreign remittances received by the left behind women, their capability also increases, whereas the husband's migrant duration does not have a statistically significant effect on the left-behind Muslim women’s capability