Session III
Trade Policy Environment – Multilateral Trading System
1. A presentation on ‘Gender and the Multilateral Trading System’ was made by Dr. Mariama Williams. In her presentation, she stated that trade liberalisation is a key facilitator of the globalization process as it intensifies the flow of goods and services by lowering and eliminating tariffs and non-tariff barriers. She highlighted the fact that globalization and trade liberalisation have an impact on gender which includes feminization of labour market, increase or decrease in access to economic and social resources for women relative to men, increase and decrease of unpaid work in home and community, changes in government budgets leading to cuts in social programmes which impact women more so than men. One of the characteristics of trade agreements at the regional and multilateral level is their exclusive focus on market access which ignores the social dimension as very often human rights and equity issues are ignored. However, given that trade liberalization impacts gender, it is important to integrate gender into trade agreements and policies
2. Multilateral Trade Agreements like the WTO encompass border measures (tariffs, Non-tariff measures, trade related matters etc), behind the border measures (Intellectual property rights, investment, competition policy, trade facilitation etc) as well as non-trade concerns which inter-alia include food security, rural development, public health, environment. It needs to be noted that despite the coverage of the trade agreements going beyond border and behind the border measures to include the non-trade concerns, what is not included in the non-trade concerns is gender equality. Gender advocates would like to open up the scope of non-trade concerns to include gender equality and therefore, the non-trade concerns are seen as a strategic entry point for economic empowerment of women in the WTO.
3. Dr. Williams further stated by saying that there are several obstacles to the incorporation of gender into trade policy. These includes lack of data and statistics on women and the economy, especially as it relates to imports and exports and also the fact that gender issues are seen as ‘political or philosophical’ in the context of trade discussions and thus overlooked. In her concluding remarks, she stated that a simple scan of the small but growing empirical literature on gender, trade and investment reveals that trade liberalisation/trade reform policies generate complex and often contradictory effects on women’s access to employment, livelihood and income.
4. During the Session, the participants also engaged in an exercise in which some Case Studies were given to them in order to enable them to understand the issues at the ground level so that they could identify and suggest ways and measures for addressing gender issues linked with trade. The participants made presentations on the three Case Studies given to them on
- Women workers and call centres in India
- Garment workers in Bangladesh and
- Women gum collectors in Gujarat.
These case studies brought out clearly the differential impact of globalization and trade liberalization and the fact that even though the trade liberalization has resulted in an increase in markets as well as an increase in employment opportunities, rural women have not benefited from the increase opportunities resulting from trade liberalization. It is important to help women to have access to market and employment opportunities and to ensure that both men and women benefit equally from the positive impact of liberalization.
5. This was followed by a brief talk by Ms. Renana Jhabvala from SEWA (Self Employed Women’s Association) who cited some case studies where women in the poorer category have confronted several challenges as a result of trade liberalization. The first example is of minor forest produce called gum, most of which is picked by women and the livelihood of these women is dependent on this minor produce. She stated that while there is a fairly large export market for gum, much of the produce is not going to the export market as it cannot meet the quality standards of international market. The second example she cited was of construction workers in India and in many other South Asian countries. The construction industry provides the second largest employment for women and is largely manual in nature. With the rapid mechanization of construction industry, there is a huge growing demand for skilled labour. Therefore, the challenge is to convert the women manual labour into skilled labour. Lastly, she cited the case of women embroidery workers. While there is a growing export market for handicrafts, the workers do not have the knowledge of what is demanded in the international markets. SEWA has set up a trade facilitation centre and is working towards capacity building of women to bring them to the international markets and it would be important to sent up a fund for capacity building and skill building of women.
