While the UK immigration system admits roughly equal shares of men and women, the gender balance varies widely by immigration category. Women made up a majority of people receiving partner visas, refugee family reunion, Ukraine visas and Health & Care visas between 2021 and 2024. Men were the majority of main applicants for seasonal workers, dependants of students, asylum applicants, and Skilled Work visas outside of Health and Care.
The share of women receiving work visas has varied over time depending on the main occupations UK employers were recruiting for. The rapid expansion of care worker visas in 2022 and 2023 briefly made women the majority of long-term skilled work visa recipients.
Among Skilled Worker and Health & Care visa holders, the gender pay gap is narrower than in the wider UK workforce—largely because women on Skilled Worker visas tend to earn significantly more than their UK-born counterparts.
Under the post-Brexit immigration system, men became more likely to receive student visas, making up a slight majority (53%) in 2024 for the first time in at least eight years. The ban on most students bringing dependants appears to have had a larger impact on female students.
Women make up the large majority of people receiving visas as partners of British citizens or settled residents. Perhaps surprisingly, this share was not initially affected by the increase in the income requirement for partner visas.
Most asylum seekers are men or boys, and this increased between 2009 and 2024—a change that may be driven partly by small boats arrivals. Asylum grant rates are broadly similar for men and women. Women and girls are more likely to benefit from humanitarian visa routes than from standard asylum routes. They were also much more likely to use the refugee family reunion route, which was suspended in September 2025.
Full report here https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/reports/migration-and-gender-in-the-uk/