Female migrants have long been neglected in migration studies and this paper therefore reconditions the intra-European migration of young women between the 1980s and 1990s by using the case study of Portuguese women in Luxembourg. While today’s discussion around the feminization of migration increasingly considers gender as a hidden cause of migration, earlier studies on female migration neglect this aspect. Although many women migrate to escape gender ideologies in their home country, they often end up being trapped in similar hierarchies in their receiving countries. This paper thus explores how gender ideologies shaped the migration and work of Portuguese women to Luxembourg during the 1980s and 1990s by using a gender perspective. By conducting semi-structured qualitative interviews with seven Portuguese women in Luxembourg, we do not only see how gender ideologies both shape and influence the migration process and the employment of these women in Luxembourg, but we can also highlight individual experiences and perceptions. Gender related constraints in Portugal, such as expectations to their social and economic behavior, their work, and their personality, pushed these women to leave their home country. However, they ended up in similar structures in Luxembourg as their only employment opportunities were in reproductive labor. The job market in Luxembourg is not only shaped by gender ideologies, but also by ideas of ‘othering’, as primarily migrant women perform reproductive labor. This paper understands reproductive work in a broader sense, as it not only considers caring duties, but also service work such as cooking, waitressing, or cleaning in institutions as reproductive labor.