Gender Issues and International Trade

Over the past few decades there has been increasing attention paid to the gender dimensions of poverty and development. More recently - essentially the last five to 10 years - academics, NGOs and international organizations have begun to pay close attention to the gender dimensions of international trade regimes, liberalization, and the impact of trade regulations and WTO decisions.

More often than not, consideration of the gender dimensions of trade and other development issues means focusing on the impact on women. As Amartya Sen, Martha Nussbaum and others have emphasized, women tend to be disproportionately poor and disadvantaged in developing countries.[1] In addition, their ownership, control, and access to economic resources, assets and markets are often limited by social norms. Moreover, they also tend to work in specific sectors of the economy - e.g., textiles, the informal sector, and agriculture. Many of the trade issues discussed by the WTO today, therefore, have differential gender impacts through the sectors of the economy they affect. Indeed, some have referred to some countries' export-led growth successes as female-led, as most of the workers in export-processing zones tend to be female.

For instance, existing research indicates that "…on average, greater trade openness is associated with increases in women's share of paid employment."[3] However, authors are quick to emphasize that women's share of unpaid work in the home and elsewhere may remain unchanged, and that they may still experience discrimination in the workplace and in hiring.[4] Other authors are concerned that reduced social service expenditure due to reduced tariff revenues may place increased care-giving and other social burdens on women.[5]

Given that trade regulations can impact the economy at both a macro- and micro-level, there are many possible avenues through which their effects might be felt, most of which are only beginning to be studied. The study of the gender impact of trade is still in its infancy, not least because statistics are often not collected by gender.[6]

A principal objection is that for women in general "…improved social indicators do not automatically open the doors of power and improve participation and representation. Development interventions also often have narrow perspectives; even interventions that may have had positive outcomes for some women in terms of economic empowerment have neither translated into collective gains nor into sustained political power."[7] Practically speaking, gender analysis also increases the analytical burden for policymakers, by adding to the data that needs to be collected, the questions that need to be asked, and the nature of the research performed. From a trade perspective, this can provide useful insights. The World Bank has found that greater gender equality can promote growth by increasing female productivity, which in turn increases the productive capacity of the economy as a whole.[8]

The WTO is increasingly becoming a source of interest for those interested in the gender dimensions of trade. One women's group notes that of 159 trade policy experts on the WTO roster of dispute, a body which settles many disagreements, only 12 were women.[9] Slowly, however, gender issues are making their way on to the WTO's agenda, as evidenced by a recent seminar on "Women as Economic Players in Sustainable Development" at the WTO's public symposium in June 2003. [10] Activist groups such as the International Gender and Trade Network (IGTN) are also carefully considering how gender issues should be addressed at the WTO, or 'mainstreamed' The IGTN, for instance, does 8] not support the establishment of a women's committee at the WTO, for fear that it would allow women's issue to be separated from rather than integrated into most discussions, or used as a public relations tool and little more.[11]

Still, there exists the normative question of whether gender issues should be explicitly on the WTO's agenda. Insofar as the goal of trade liberalization is the raising of living standards for all, then it follows that gender impacts be evaluated explicitly, just as the impacts of trade measures on rural versus urban and poor versus rich populations often are.

However, women's rights as codified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other UN bodies and declarations have on occasion met with fierce resistance from member countries. If some countries object to specific gender or women's agendas under the UN's mission, they may well object more to the WTO taking on gender issues if they view it primarily as an organization to address economic rather than social issues. Yet, in UN members - and by implication, WTO members - made the declared in at the Fourth UN World Conference on Women in Beijing that they would "ensure that national policies related to international and regional trade agreements do not have an adverse impact on women's new and traditional economic activities." [12] Time will tell whether and how they choose to live up to this commitment.

Links

The Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID)

Development Alternatives with Women in a New Era (DAWN)

European Women's Lobby

International Gender and Trade Network

United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM)

World Bank GenderNet

Publications

Carr, Marilyn and Martha Alter Chen. "Globalization and the Informal Economy: How Global Trade and Investment Impact on the Working Poor." May 2001.

Evers, Barbara, "Gender, International Trade and the Trade Policy Review Mechanism: Conceptual Reference Points For UNCTAD," January 23, 2002.

Epstein, Gerald. University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Economics 797 Syllabus: Gender, Macro and International Economics.

European Women's Lobby. "Engendering International Trade: Gender Equality in a Global World."

Grown, Caren, Diane Elson, and Nilufer Cagatay. "Introduction." World Development. Vol 28, No. 7 (July 2000), pp. 1145-1156.

Kapur, Akash. "Humane Development." The Atlantic Monthly. 15 December 1999.

UNCTAD. "Mainstreaming Gender to Promote Opportunities Through the Increased Contribution of Women to Competitiveness." Note by the Secretariat. December 31, 2001.

UNCTAD. "Report of the Pre-LDC III Workshop on LDCs: Building Capacities for Mainstreaming Gender in the Development Strategies." March 21-23, 2001.

UNIFEM. "Trade Liberalization and Women."

UNIFEM. "Gender and the Financing for Development Agenda."

Voices of the Poor series published for the World Bank.

World Bank. Engendering Development. Washington, DC: World Bank, 2001.

[1] For some brief commentary by Amartya Sen on aspects of the study of women and development, refer to Kapur, Akash, "Humane Development," The Atlantic Monthly, 15 December 1999 [online: web] URL: http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/interviews/ba991215.htm.