In addition to the fulfilment of fundamental rights for women and girls, gender equality has recently been hailed as a 'breakthrough' strategy for promoting inclusive development and reducing poverty. Understanding the nature and extent of the obstacles to gender equality is therefore critical to designing effective policies to promote equality between men and women, and consequently, to improving development outcomes. Higher levels of discriminatory institutions in origin countries hinder the likelihood of female migration, reducing the migrant share in origin populations, which consequently is too low to positively shift discriminatory norms towards greater gender equality.