But the Puerto Rican Great Migration was strikingly female—in the half decade after World War II it was 59 percent so. That was partly because foreign women had a harder time crossing U.S. borders, which left an opening for Puerto Rican women, often in domestic service. But it also owed to the encouragement of the island government, which was eager to see the departure of women of childbearing age. Many did leave. In 1950 about one in seven Puerto Ricans lived not on the island, but on the mainland. By 1955, it was closer to one in four.
