The purpose of this research is to examine changes in American immigration patterns of Asian American women after World War II. The plan of the research will be to set forth the context in which the shift in Asian immigration to the U.S. toward predominance of women occurred and then to discuss, with reference to EspirituÆs Asian American Women and Men, effects that these immigrant women have had on the general structure of Asian immigration to the U.S. and on the relationship between immigrant Asian men and women in particular.
What Espiritu describes as ôengenderedö structures of relationships between Asian men and women in the U.S. and of the relationship between the dominant culture and Asian women is the focus of her analysis of the impact of the predominance of Asian women over Asian men as immigrants to the U.S. in recent years. She constructs her discussion around three economic sectors into which immigration patterns of Asian women fall: highly educated, disadvantaged, and entrepreneurial (62). She sees differences in the American experience for women in each of these three categories. But in the background of all Asian womenÆs immigrant experience of America, whatever the socioeconomic category, are the facts of American immigration policy since 1965, when the Immigration Act of that year ôequalized immigration rights for all nationalitiesö (61). In particular, the 1965 act ôallowed women to enter the United States as occupational immigrantsö (63). Whereas formerly Asian women might have entered the U.S. as family dependents of Asian immigrant men and entering the American work force almost exclusively as unskilled labor in the ôsecondary sectorö of employment (63), after 1965 they could enter on their own account ôfrom heterogeneous backgrounds and . . . a wide range of occupational fieldsö (63). Equally impor tant: The economic structure of the U.S. as a whole since 1965 has shifted away from basic heavy-indu...