Coming out of the country: community size and gender balance among Alaskan natives

• Main Authors: Hamilton, Lawrence C., Seyfrit, Carole L
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository 1994
• Subjects: Sociology; Arctic; Alaska
• Online Access: https://scholars.unh.edu/soc_facpub/158; http://www.jstor.org/stable/40316346

Previous studies established that Alaskan Native women are more likely than Alaskan Native men to keep full-time jobs, attend college, or move to cities. We heard accounts of this divergence, and its social consequences, during recent research in the Northwest Arctic and Bristol Bay regions. For this paper we expand our scope beyond the two regions initially studied, and explore the magnitude of Native female outmigration from bush Alaska. Statewide data show a systematic relation between Native gender balance and community size, consistent with differential migration. In some other societies "female' flight occurs along rural/urban and associated social class lines, but its magnitude in Alaska's transcultural context raises particularly acute issues of individual and cultural survival. -from Authors