Abstract
Despite the feminization of international labour migration and women’s growing contribution to household welfare, economic gains from migration do not necessarily translate into equivalent changes in gendered household power. Existing research has examined migration decision-making, remittances, transnational family relations and women’s empowerment largely as separate domains, leaving limited understanding of how household power is negotiated and reproduced across the migration trajectory. This study examines how gendered household power shapes women’s international labour migration before departure, during transnational employment and after economic gains are realized. Drawing on qualitative interviews with migrant women, husbands and household members in Kebonsari Village, Madiun Regency, East Java, Indonesia, the study employs thematic analysis to trace how household authority is negotiated across different stages of migration. The Mindings reveal a persistent paradox: women’s mobility may expand through household authorisation, while their economic contributions do not necessarily translate into equivalent decision-making authority. Mobility is authorised through household negotiation, economic gains are governed through transnational remittance practices and empowerment emerges as conditional rather than transformative. Building on these Mindings, the study develops the Conditional Mobility Framework, which integrates authorised mobility, transnational household governance and conditional empowerment to explain how gendered household power persists and adapts across time and borders. The framework contributes to migration, gender and development scholarship by demonstrating that women’s economic incorporation through migration can coexist with and in some circumstances reinforce, enduring gendered structures of household authority.
Keywords: Conditional Mobility, Gendered Household Power, International Labour Migration, Transnational Household Governance, Women’s Empowerment.