This paper examines the impact of gender empowerment on labor market performance of U.S. married immigrants across different family types. Three types of families are defined based on the nationality of immigrants’ spouses; ‘Home-country Marriage’ where both spouses come from the same home-country, ‘Native Marriage’ where one spouse is an immigrant and the other is a Native, and ‘Foreign Marriage’ where both spouses are immigrants, but each comes from a different country of origin from the other. Recognizing the role of gender ideology across different family structures, this study provides empirical evidence of the impact culturally based gender status has on immigrants across family types. Labor market performance is measured by wages and the labor force participation decision of immigrants, using the Ordinary Least Squares and Logit models. The gender empowerment measure is utilized to reflect different cultural and institutional conditions, which shape gender status in the immigrants’ home countries. Results indicate the positive effect of gender equality on women’s earnings and labor force participation, as well as that home-country gender status strongly influence women’s labor force participation and earnings when they share the same cultural norms as their husbands. Interestingly, women are more influenced by their spouses’ gender norms than men when immigrants come from a different cultural gender norm than their spouse. © 2018, Springer Nature B.V.

GEM (gender empowermentmeasure) Cultural gender norms Family typology gender inequality Labor market performance of married immigrants Earnings of married immigrants Gender empowerment Labor force participation of married immigrants

ideology typology equity market conditions immigrant empowerment labor market gender United States income labor participation