International Journal of Intercultural Relations 24 (2000) 791–805 Marital conflict and finances among Filipinas in Australia Nicole Woelz-Stirling a , Lenore Manderson b, *, Margaret Kelaher b , Sara Gordon c a School of Modern Asian Studies, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia b Key Centre for Women’s Health in Society, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia c Johns Hopkins Medical School, Baltimore, MD, USA Abstract Differences in finance practices emerged as a major theme in interviews conducted by The Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health among the Filipina community in Queensland. Women’s decisions to migrate and marry Australian men are influenced by their perceptions of relative wealth of their future husband, and their presumed enhanced ability to provide support for Filipino kin. However, because of unrealised financial expectations, issues related to the remittance of money to family in The Philippines, the husband’s disapproval of his wife’s participation in the paid workforce, and financial practices such as the management of the household finances and roles with money, finance is a constant point of tension in many Filipina–Australian marriages. It seems that in migrating to Australia, many Filipinas exchange one type of money problem for another } one that they rarely foresee. # 2000 El- sevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Filipinos are the second largest Asian immigrant population in Australia, 1 with twice as many women as men born in The Philippines currently living in Australia *Correspondence address: Key Centre for Women’s Health in Society, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, The University of Melbourne, 720 Swanston Street, Carlton, Vic. 3053, Australia. Tel.: +61-3-9344-4333. E-mail address: l.manderson@kcwh.unimelb.edu.au (L. Manderson). 1 The largest Asian immigrant population in Australia are the Vietnamese (Australia, Bureau of Statistics, 1997). 0147-1767/00/$ - see front matter # 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII:S0147-1767(00)00032-8