A/HRC/41/38 Forum on Migration and Development, as does the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. 29. Bilateral agreements, if thoughtfully designed and implemented, can positively contribute to the promotion of protection-sensitive approaches to migration management. While there are some initiatives to include gender-responsive provisions in bilateral agreements, more safeguards are needed to ensure comprehensive, gender-responsive bilateral and multilateral agreements that effectively protect the human rights of migrant women and girls. D. Gendered drivers of migration for women and girls 30. Men and women migrate for similar reasons, such as the desire to receive a better education, to find work, to improve the quality of life for themselves and their families, and to reunite with family members. Migration can also be caused by duress, such as the need to flee conflict and persecution, or economic precariousness. In addition, particular drivers of migration are a lack of opportunities for young people, food insecurity, 13 environmental degradation and natural disasters. In Central America, for example, some major factors causing young people in particular to migrate are extra-State or gang violence and practices amounting to forced recruitment. 14 31. On the other hand, it has become increasingly clear that migration is a gendered phenomenon. Gender-specific norms governing society are decisive factors, as are gendered expectations and differentiated power relations. The differentiated impact of economic inequality shapes the reasons for which women and girls migrate. Those reasons vary considerably compared to the reasons for which men and boys choose to migrate. 15 It is equally important to note that migrant women and girls are a highly heterogeneous group, with different profiles and socioeconomic characteristics. 32. An important factor causing the migration of women and girls is gendered expectations,16 as families may send abroad their daughters rather than their sons if they believe that their daughters are more likely to send home remittances.17 Before any person migrates, negotiation at the household level usually takes place. 18 In such negotiations, rather than seeking to completely upend the gender hierarchy within their families, women and girls instead co-opt prevailing gendered discourses in order to win over powerful stakeholders. Women therefore frame their migration aspirations in gendered terms, presenting themselves as dutiful daughters and caring mothers, and promising to remit most of their overseas earnings to ensure the future well-being of the family members left behind.19 Playing on gendered expectations and norms is not limited to aspiring migrant women but can also include men, who are able to call upon well-established gendered images of the “male breadwinner” or of “authority” when wanting to migrate, and use them to fend off resistance. 33. The prevalence of sexual and gender-based discrimination, harmful practices such as child, early and forced marriage, violence, and unequal access to rights and resources are crucial reasons why women and girls migrate. As such, women’s desire to migrate may be 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 8 Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, International Migration Report 2017, ST/ESA/SER.A/404, p. 26. See International Crisis Group, “Mafia of the poor: gang violence and extortion in Central America” (Brussels, 2017). Tam O’Neil, Anjali Fleury and Marta Foresti, “Women on the move: migration, gender equality and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” (London, Overseas Development Institute, 2016), p. 4. Gendered expectations are expectations that distinguish expected behaviour on the basis of gender. (See Rachel Marcus and Caroline Harper, eds., “Social norms, gender norms and adolescent girls: a brief guide” (London, Overseas Development Institute, 2015), p. 3.) O’Neil, Fleury and Foresti, “Women on the move”, pp. 4–5. Anju Mary Paul, “Negotiating migration, performing gender” in Social Forces, vol. 94, No. 1 (September 2015), p. 272. Ibid., pp. 272–273.