February 2006.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Gender is a key factor in the complex relationship between trade, growth and development – and yet there is a widespread assumption that trade policies and agreements are class, race and gender neutral. This report points to the crucial need to ensure that trade liberalisation does not undermine women’s rights and poor people’s livelihoods, and supports the gender equality agenda. First and foremost, this requires the explicit recognition of women’s contribution to the economy through both their productive and their unpaid reproductive work.

Trade, trade policy and development

Trade as an activity of economic exchange has a long history that far precedes its regulation within World Trade Organization (WTO) rules that we see today. Trade liberalisation entails the reduction of barriers to trade, such as import tariffs, in order to promote international trade and competition. While the conventional wisdom simply assumed that trade liberalisation was itself the key factor that would automatically ensure the growth and development of poor countries, there is an emerging consensus that trade liberalisation does not always reduce poverty and often increases inequality. Analysis of the gendered impacts of trade agreements underscores the critical links between trade and both the production and reproduction spheres. Moreover, as trade has an impact on gender equality, underlying gender inequality may have a decisive impact on the outcomes of trade policies by limiting productivity, output and growth.

Ten years of WTO negotiations

The WTO was set up in 1995 during the Uruguay round of international trade negotiations. However, only four years later, in its Third Ministerial meeting in Seattle, mass protests erupted at the perceived inequalities and injustices of trade liberalisation and the lack of a developing country perspective in negotiations. A human rights approach to trade has been promoted by civil society activists, developing country governments and other actors over the past decade. They have argued that poverty and livelihoods must be placed at the centre of trade debates – an approach that has led to conflicts between richer countries and developing countries. At the Fourth WTO Ministerial meeting in 2001, the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) was established with a progressive range of measures that in theory would be beneficial to poor countries. However, despite this ambitious agenda, there has been little success in securing agreement between rich and poor countries in subsequent negotiations in Cancún and Hong Kong.

Approaches to gender and trade

The human rights approach has also provided a strategic entry point for gender advocates in governments, civil society and donor agencies to promote gender equality in and through trade. However, the human rights approach is not always gendered and must be understood in conjunction with the gender and development (GAD) approach developed by gender advocates in civil society, government and donor agencies in the late 1990s. The GAD approach seeks to understand the 2 gender roles and relations of unequal power which influence impacts of and responses to trade – including the role of social reproduction. This report also argues for the development of an alternative, political economy approach, which puts rights and understandings of gender and other power inequalities in the wider global context of developed and developing countries.

The gendered impacts of trade

Trade policies affect men and women differently due to gender inequalities in access to and control of economic and social resources and decision-making. Their impact is also mediated by the different roles that men and women have within societies – in particular, the gendered division of labour. Trade liberalisation has no doubt led to an increase in employment opportunities for women – particularly in export -oriented sectors such as textiles. Earning an income externally to the household can lead to greater empowerment for women, both in the home and in the wider community. However, trade liberalisation can also lead to unemployment and the restructuring of labour markets – a situation that tends to affect poor and marginalised groups of women more than men. In fact, occupational and wage segregation is widening and bad working conditions are rife in many export industries. The need for flexible workers to respond to market fluctuations has led to a rise in the numbers of informal sector workers, of which a high percentage are women.

Work to date on gender and trade

At the macro level, women advocates in organisations like the International Gender and Trade Network (IGTN), Women in Development Europe (WIDE) and the Women’s Edge Coalition have used impact analysis tools to lever gender considerations into trade agreements. Research tools such as value chain analysis, which examines the different value ascribed to each player in the process of producing a commodity, have also been used by national actors, researchers and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to help understand the links between trade and gender inequality. Some donor agencies, for example, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), have developed trade-related capacity building (TRCB) initiatives that include a gender component, and multilateral agencies such as the International Labour Organization (ILO) have implemented gender mainstreaming policies in their activities to strengthen the rights of workers. The ILO, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the International Trade Centre (ITC) are all involved in measures to promote women’s entrepreneurship and support their entry into international markets. There are also associations of businesswomen being established in many countries to support networking, training and market access.


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Contents

Acronyms

Executive summary

1. Introduction

2. Gender, trade and development
2.1 Trade, trade policy and development
2.1.1 What is trade?
2.1.2 Trade policy and trade liberalisation
2.1.3 Why is trade a development issue?
2.2 Why do we need to look at gender in the context of trade?
2.2.1 What is gender?
2.2.2 Feminist economics
2.2.3 Trade, growth and gender

3. Historical context
3.1 The Multilateral Trading System and the formation of the World Trade Organization
3.2 Regional trade agreements 13
3.3 The Doha Development Agenda
3.4 Gender and the Multilateral Trading System

4. Gendered impacts of trade liberalisation
4.1 Broad impacts of trade liberalisation
4.1.1 Production structures and employment
4.1.2 The gender wage gap
4.1.3 Small and medium enterprises and women entrepreneurs
4.1.4 Impact on services and the household
4.2 Gender impacts by sector
4.2.1 Agriculture
4.2.2 Intellectual property
4.2.3 Services
4.2.4 Other trade agreements

5. Gender, trade and development strategies
5.1 Approaches to gender and trade
5.1.1 From the women in development approach to the gender and development approach
5.1.2 The human rights approach
5.1.3 The gender and political economy/ alternative approach
5.2 Gender and trade in development policy
5.2.1 Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers
5.2.2 The new aid architecture
5.2.3 The Millennium Development Goals

6. Work to date on gender and trade
6.1 Advocacy at the international level
6.2 Advocacy at the national level
6.3 Research/measuring the impact of trade policy
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6.3.1 Trade Policy Review Mechanism
6.3.2 Sustainability Impact Assessments
6.3.3 Value chain analysis
6.3.4 Other strategic tools
6.4 Institutions and programme-level interventions
6.4.1 Fair/ethical trade schemes
6.4.2 Labour standards
6.4.3 Corporate social responsibility/accountability
6.4.4 Supporting women producers
6.5 The challenges of trade-related capacity building and technical assistance

7. Conclusions and recommendations
7.1 Towards a gender-aware conceptual framework for trade
7.2 Potential key strategies for promoting gender-sensitive trade policy
7.2.1 Research and impact assessment
7.2.2 Engendering trade policies
7.2.3 Promoting the rights and participation of women in trade policy
7.3 Working towards gender-sensitive trade programmes and institutions
7.4 Recommendations

Annex
Bibliography

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