12 URBAN AND RURAL DISTRIBUTION OF VARIOUS STOCKS 
service, restaurant work and mercantile, factory and professional pursuits of various: kinds 
are open to women in urban centres. Further, matrimonial opportunities and social attrac- 
tions may exert considerable influence. It is obviously quite impossible to weigh the 
celative importance of these forees in quantitative terms. 
The explanation of the differences which occur between the several stocks in respect 
to the behaviour of the men and women us to preference for urban and rural life, is even 
more difficult. They cannot be explained in terms of the excess of males among the various 
groups of immigrants in this country. There is a surplus of males in all groups and these 
surpluses vary in size, but no correlation is apparent between the percentage urban and the 
sex ratio. It is possible that some relationship might be found between length of residence 
in Canada and the tendency for the percentage of women to exceed the proportion of men. 
Reference will be made to this in connection with the figures for the United States born, 
but it is improbable that length of residence in Canada is the main explanation. It is 
suggested that the basic cause will be found in vocational and in cultural differences which 
are not subject to quantitative measurement. Interpretation of the table must be left to 
those who have first hand knowledge of the peculiar characteristics and important voca- 
tions of the various groups. A few interesting facts, however, are pointed out as to the 
sank of the foreign born from countries which are more important from the point of view 
of Canada’s biological composition. 
For the population as a whele the percentage of females living in urban districts is 
4.44 pe. greater than the proportion of males, and for all immigrants the difference is 
6:05 p.c. It is apparent from these figures that immigrant women show a greater tendency 
bo concentrate in urban districts as compared with male immigrants than do the women in 
the population as a whole as compared with the men in the total population. Figures for 
the individual countries of birth are given in Table 55. Where the surplus is small, female 
immigrants from a given country are found in rural parts to an unusual extent as compared 
with male immigrants from the same country. Where the difference is large the women 
concentrate in urban centres to a far greater extent than the men. 
Immigrants from only six countries show a tendency for females to dwell in urban dis- 
tricts which exceeds that of the males to an extent less than that which obtains for the 
populatien in Canada as a whole. Two of these countries. namely, Turkey and Bulgaria, 
wre comparatively unimportant from the standpoint of numbers, and the remaining four, 
namely, Russia, Austria, Ukraine and Galacia, are all in the South, Eastern and Central 
European section of Europe. This means that the women from ‘that section of the Continent 
are exceptionally rural as compared with the men. That this should be the case and that the 
oulk of immigrants from those four countries should be of Slavic origin is rather significant. 
In the case of seven other countries the females differ from the males in respect to 
concentration in urban districts to an extent less than obtains for the total immigrant 
oopulation. They are Holland, Belgium, Germany and Norway in the North and West of 
Burope, Greece in the South, and Hungary and Roumania in the East. 
The immigrants showing the greatest difference between males and females in this 
respect are the Jugo-Slavs, the Italians, the Japanese, the Finns and the Chinese. In all 
five cases the percentage of females urban exceeds by more than 10 vec. the proportion of 
males living in urban districts. 
The difference of 8-61 p.c. for the United States immigrants is suggestive. That figure 
is higher than the figure for any of the groups of origins which appear at the foot of Table 55. 
Immigration from the United States consists largely of British and French stock with an 
admixture of Scandinavian and Germanic, yet the difference between males and females of 
United States birth in respect to concentration in urban districts is greater than that for 
either the British born, the French born or those of Scandinavian or Germanic birth. 
Length of residence on this continent seems to be the main explanation. 
Finally, on examining the data for the geographical and linguistic groups, it appears 
that the extent by which the females exceed the males in urban concentration is far greater 
tor the North Western Europeans than for immigrants from the South, Eastern and Central 
Europe. Indeed. the fizure for South. Eastern and Central Europe is smaller than that for