Catalog

Trade Liberalization: Pain or Gain?
ADB Review [ January - February 2004 ]

The different impacts on women and men of changes in trade policies and rules must be studied carefully

By Jenny McGill
Consultant, Regional and Sustainable Development Department

Women’s voices are not generally heard in the development of national trade policies

Women’s organizations and networks were active in civil society events at the World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial meeting in Cancún, Mexico, in September 2003. What brought them to Cancún?

Trade economists recognize that liberalizing trade creates both winners and losers. Women’s organizations are concerned that not enough attention has been paid to the gender-differentiated impacts of changes in national trade policies and international trade rules. They argue that trade liberalization can have positive, negative, or mixed impacts on different groups of women—women farmers, ethnic minority women, factory workers, and small business owners. While some gain, others may lose. For example, poor women in developing countries are less likely to have the skills, technology, and other resources to take advantage of new work and business opportunities resulting from increased trade. They are also more vulnerable to changes in prices of agricultural inputs and staple goods, and changes in basic services that can accompany liberalized trade.

Women’s voices are not generally heard in the development of national trade policies and the negotiation of trade agreements. Women’s organizations are also concerned about the expanding scope of WTO and other trade agreements—which now cover cross-border services and investments, intellectual property, and a wide range of domestic regulations, as well as trade in goods—and the limits these agreements can place on the flexibility of developing countries to pursue their own development, gender, and environmental policies.

What is being done to integrate gender concerns in trade discussions? The United Nations recently established an interagency task force on gender and trade, and gender will be one of the crosscutting issues considered at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) XI in June 2004. The UNCTAD Secretariat, Commonwealth Secretariat, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, and others have also taken steps to mainstream gender concerns in their trade-related work. Several international and bilateral agencies have commissioned research and pilot studies on the gender implications of trade liberalization. For example, ADB is helping the Cambodian Government prepare for possible layoffs of garment workers, who are primarily young women. Gender-aware economists are also taking account of gender differences in their research on trade liberalization. For instance, ADB economist Joseph Zveglich and others have studied the relationship between trade openness and gender wage gaps in the Republic of Korea and Taipei,China. Civil society groups such as the International Gender and Trade Network are advocating changes in existing trade regimes to better promote gender equality and other development goals, as well as gender and social assessments of new trade agreements.

How can ADB and other development organizations better address gender concerns in their trade-related work? Through trade-related technical assistance, ADB and others can support the collection of sex-disaggregated trade data, and the capacity building of trade ministry staff to analyze possible trade policy changes and proposed trade agreements from a gender and social perspective. In preparing loans to support trade reforms or export sectors, ADB already is required to include gender considerations in its poverty and social analyses. It could also include positive measures in loan designs to ensure that women and men benefit from trade reforms and export activities being supported. ADB’s grant funds could also support more pilot projects to increase opportunities for women farmers, artisans, and business owners to benefit from trade, and to help its developing member countries mitigate the social costs of trade openness.

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