Return migration: changing roles of men and women

The study concerns Greek returnees from the Federal Republic of Germany and explores changes in task sharing behaviour and gender role attitudes resulting from changes in cultural environments.
A group of return migrants was compared with a group of non-migrants, both living in villages in the District of Drama, Greece. Groups were interviewed to investigate the extent to which each spouse shared house tasks as well as their attitudes towards gender roles in the family.
The data were factor analysed and a t-test was used to determine any differences between the groups. In addition to demographic variables, those concerning the "time lived abroad" and the "number of years in Greece" after return were inserted into a series of regression analyses for the purpose of explaining task sharing and gender role attitudes.
The results showed that: (a) task sharing of return migrants differs from on-migrants with respect to tasks which are peripheral to house organization. It seems that migrants' task sharing behaviour changes to a certain degree as a result of their changing socio-cultural environments. Results also suggest that migrant husbands and wives either take on new patterns of behaviour or maintain traditional ones only when these are congruent with the financial aims of the family or can be integrated into living conditions in Greece upon return. (b) Lack of differences between groups in an Attitude Questionnaire suggest that gender role attitudes have changed for both migrants and non-migrants over the last 15 to 20 years, although for different reasons and the different conditions under which these groups had lived.