Female Flight? Gender Balance and Outmigration by Native Alaskan Villagers

Recent surveys in Alaska' s predominantly Native Bristol Bay and Northwest Arctic regions find that female high school students, more often than males, expect to migrate permanently away from their home community and region. Reports from high school graduates indicate that more young women do move away after graduation; other research establishes that Native women more often attend college or hold full-time jobs. Statewide 1990 Census data confirm a significant relation between percent female and community population, consistent with the hypothesis that “female flight” from Native villages is shifting the young adult gender balance. Bush villages tend to have more young Native men than women, whereas larger cities have more young Native women than men. Such imbalances must directly affect oppor tunities for marriage, family, and cultural continuity. They could also have wide-ranging indirect consequences, including exacerbation of village social and health problems associated with unmarried young men. Over the past several years we have been conducting research among high school students in Alaska' s Bristol Bay and Northwest Arctic regions (predominantly Yup' ik and Inupiat Eskimo, respectively). Our initial interest focused on the ways in which rapid natural resource development, such as the Northwest Arctic' s Red Dog Mine, affects the aspirations and attitudes of rural Alaskan adolescents (1). In spring 1992 we surveyed about two-thirds of the high school students in both regions, as well as a majority of Bristol Bay region high school graduates from 1987!1991. We subsequently returned to discuss the survey results with educators and students in fifteen towns and villages. On our travels through Native villages we sometimes heard accounts of young women moving away for jobs, education, or mar riage, leaving the village with a problematic excess of young men. Other researchers have reported similar stories from elsewhere in Alaska (2,3) and from such distant lands as Greenland (4), Iceland (5), and Siber ia (6). With these repor ts in mind, we began searching for hard evidence of disproportionate outmigration by young village women. In both our student survey r esults and U.S. Census data, we found indications that the phenomenon of “female flight” might be fair ly common within the two regions we studied (7). This paper begins by briefly reviewing Alaskan Native and non-Native demographics. Next we present indirect evidence relevant to female flight. Finally we turn to Census data and demonstrate that a corr elation exists between Native gender imbalance and community size throughout the state of Alaska. Alaskan Demographics About 86 000 of Alaska' s 550 000 people (as of 1990) are Native Americans. Natives constitute a small minority in cities, but they form the majority in bush (rural) villages. Figure 1 breaks down Alaska' s ethnic composition for places of village (below 1000 people), town (1000 ! 9999) and city (10 000 or more) size (8). Young adults (25 to 45 years old) are the most abundant age group among Alaska' s white population. These young adults include many men who moved to Alaska for job or lifestyle reasons. White males outnumber white females in every age group below about 65 (Figure 2). The age-sex distribution for Alaskan Natives, on the other hand, follows a different pattern (Figure 3). Infants are the largest single age group in this fast-growing population, which experiences comparatively little inmigration from outside Alaska. Unlike the white population, Alaska' s Native population exhibits no statewide gender imbalance until old age, when for both groups female longevity becomes a factor. 190 Chapter 3: Environment, Lifestyle and Health Circumpolar Health 1993 Figure 2: Age-sex distr ibution of white Alaskans. Figure 3: Age-sex distr ibution of Native Alaskans. Figure 4: Male and female high school students expecting to live most of their lives outside their home region. The Native gender balance seen in Figure 3 does not necessarily imply that no female flight occurs from Alaska itself. Young Native men have exceptionally high mor tality rates (9), and for that reason alone we might expect to see more young Native women than men — but in fact statewide there are slightly fewer. The effects of differential mor tality and out-of-state migration are worthy topics for further research, though beyond our scope here. High School Students Survey In spring 1992 we successfully surveyed over two-thirds (n = 430) of the high school students in fifteen predominantly Native communities of Alaska' s Nor thwest Arctic and Bristol Bay regions (1, 6). Among other things, the questionnaires asked where students thought they would spend most of the rest of their lives. About 63% said they expected to leave their present region, a much higher proportion than one might guess from the modest numbers of recent graduates reported to have actually established themselves elsewhere. We found persistent gender differences in migration expectations: more girls than boys said they would likely move away. Figure 4 tracks this gender difference across four subsamples: Bristol Bay region villages (Aleknagik, Manokotak, New Stuyahok, and Togiak), the Bristol Bay region' s hub town (Dillingham), Nor thwest Arctic villages (Ambler, Buckland, Deer ing, Kiana, Kivalina, Noatak, Noorvik, Selawik, and Shungnak), and the Nor thwest Arctic' s hub town (Kotzebue). Gender differences also arose when we asked about univer sity aspirations: girls were significantly more ambitious than boys regarding higher education. In conversations with small groups of students, we heard repeatedly that school is a “girl type of thing,” in which females perform better because they work harder or are Hamilton & Seyfrit: Female Flight? Gender Balance and Outmigration by Native Alaskan Villagers 191 smarter or care less for alternative pursuits like hunting and basketball. Gender differences in ambitions translate into differences in outcomes; University of Alaska studies document the growing preponderance of women among Native college students (10,11). Both the anti-school attitudes of boys, and girls' willingness to adapt, might carry over to white-collar employment in general — opening a wide gap between the opportunities boys and girls perceive. High School Graduates Survey In addition to surveying students, we attempted the more difficult task of surveying recent high school graduates in both regions. Six local interviewers (Inupiat in the Northwest Arctic, and Yup' ik in Bristol Bay) were hired and trained for this work. Our Northwest Arctic completion rate was low, but Bristol Bay interviewers succeeded in contacting 54% (n = 144) of the people who had graduated from area high schools over the years 1987!1991. Although 54% is still not high enough to insure a representative sample, our graduate survey results fit well between high school and Census data. Among Bristol Bay graduates, women were somewhat more likely to have attended a university after graduating from high school (Table I). They were also significantly more likely to have a full-time job, and more than twice as likely to be living outside the Bristol Bay region at the time of the survey. Despite (or perhaps because of) these tangible steps towards acculturation, the women also assigned greater importance to retaining their Native language and culture. In broad terms these results concur with the gender difference seen earlier regarding students' expectations: females more often plan to leave, and do leave. In detail, however, Table I contrasts with Figure 4. Percentages of students who think they will leave (Figure 4) appear much higher than percentages of graduates who actually left (Table I). For a young man or woman raised in rural Alaska, establishing a successful urban life presents big challenges in an unfamiliar world (12). Many try, but return to their home villages. Table I. Gender Differences in Survey Responses by Bristol Bay High School Graduates (62 men, 69 women). P men women all test Attended university 26% 30% 28% n.s. Have full time job 54% 75% 65% P < .05 Living outside region 10% 25% 18% P < .05 Very important keep language 76% 93% 85% P < .01 Data source: fixed-choice questions on survey conducted spring 1992. In retrospect, graduates often wish they had taken different courses in high school. Table II lists types of courses they mentioned most often in response to our open-ended question. To bush teachers and students, the most surprising result here may be the widespread wish for more hard math, science, and academically demanding courses in general. The tone of respondents' comments indicated that many viewed their rural high schools as too easy, leaving them inadequately prepared to complete college or compete for desirable jobs. Two significant gender differences stand out in Table II. Men more often than women wish they had taken shop classes, par ticularly for skills like boat building and small engine repair. Women, on the other hand, wish for business skills like typing, accounting, and computer applications. These preferences more or less follow traditional sex roles, of course, but note that they lead in different directions. Shop-class skills like small engine repair help out in the bush, but will not lead many boys to full-time jobs. Entry-level business skills, on the other hand, have limited importance in the bush. Mainly they prepare girls for white-collar urban careers. As Kleinfeld (13) shows: Inupiat women have surged into the work force and have increasingly entered skilled work.. . . Inupiat men, in contrast, have developed a culturally different pattern of economic activity. . . [they] are concentrated in intermittent blue-collar work [and] also participate substantially in the subsistence economy. Table II. Courses Bristol Bay and Northwest Arctic Graduates Wish They Had Taken More of in High School (90 men, 109 women). P men women all test Math — e.g. algebra, calculus, trigonometry, geometry 19% 26% 23% n.s. Business — e.g. typing accounting, computer applications 7% 28% 18% P< .001 Science — e.g. chemistry, physics 14% 12% 13% n.s. More academic, college prep 12% 8% 10% n.s. Shop — e.g. small engine repair 11% 1% 6% P < .05 English, writing 5% 6% 6% n.s. Data source: open-ended question on survey conducted spring 1992. No answer/more than one answer possible. Analysis of the 1990 Census If the outmigration of Native women from the bush were as substantial as survey results and anecdotal accounts suggest, it should have visible demographic 192 Chapter 3: Environment, Lifestyle and Health Circumpolar Health 1993 Figure 5: Boxplots showing percent female in 158 communities, by total population. consequences. To test this hypothesis we assembled data on the age-sex-race composition of every community in Alaska (n = 352), using the 1990 Census (8). Figure 5 displays boxplots of the percent female among 20!39 year old Natives in 158 Alaskan places, grouped according to their total population. These 158 places are mostly discrete villages, towns, and cities, though they also include some rural areas with dispersed populations. The boxplots include all places in Alaska with 100 or more Native residents. Hor izontal lines within each boxplot mark the median percent female for places of that size. Differences among these medians are statistically significant (Table III). We emphasize medians and a nonparametr ic Kruskal-Wallis test here due to potential outlier problems; robust analysis of variance indicates that the means significantly differ as well. Table III: Median Percent Female Among Alaskan Natives 20 to 39 Years Old. Median Kruskal% female Wallis test 125 places with population < 1000 45.2% 27 places with population 1000!9999 51.4% 6 places with population $ 10 000 55.2%