Over 9 Percent of Overseas Workers are Women

There are over 78,000 Nepalese women working overseas countries, except in India, according to a report.

The report prepared by Nepal Institute for Development Studies with the help of UNIFEM has shown that 9.13 percent of overseas workers are women.

The women send home Rs 11 billion every year in forms of remittances. Although women generally earn less compared to men, they save more. The report concludes that better environment should be created to facilitate their foreign employment.

Of the total women working overseas, 66 percent work as house maids while the rest work in factories, offices and restaurants. An average stay of a woman in overseas is around three and a half years. The study on migration and remittance was conducted by Ganesh Gurung, Dr. Jagannath Adhikari, David Seddon and Dr. Chandra Bhadra.

The study points out that apart from India, there are 858,451 Nepalese working in overseas countries. There are 1550 women working in UAE, 1870 in Kuwait, 1600 in Qatar, 30,000 in Saudi Arabia, 1340 in Bahrain, 400 in Lebanon, and 350 in Israel – a total of 40,000 in Gulf countries. Likewise, a substantial number of Nepalese women are working in Hong Kong, followed by the United States, United Kingdom, Japan and Australia.