If at first you do not succeed, try women's economic empowerment through trade

Simonetta Zarrilli is the chief of the Trade, Gender and Development Programme at UNCTAD.

This blog represents her personal views only, not the views of the UNCTAD secretariat or its member States.

The WTO Joint Ministerial Declaration on the Advancement of Gender Equality and Women’s Economic Empowerment within Trade is a recent step taken by the trade community to link trade policy to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5 on achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls. Would making trade more inclusive bring a renewed trust in trade liberalization? A close look at the background and the outcome of this Declaration shows us how far WTO Members are willing to go to use trade to overcome gender inequality.  

Trade and economic integration in a pandemic era

Doubts have been expressed for quite some time about the beneficial impact of international trade on different countries and people, and they have increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. The economic repercussions of the health crisis have penalized in particular countries that were already vulnerable to external shocks and hold a tiny share of global trade, as well as segments of the population that are often marginalized by globalization: informal workers, youth, migrant workers, the elderly, and women. 

Furthermore, lockdowns and travel restrictions made global value chains less resilient than expected, depriving producers and consumers of items in need. In the early months of the pandemic, large buyers canceled orders for non-essential goods that were already produced because of a drop in demand, with consequent layoffs and wage cuts. Governments proved to be prone to resorting to trade-restrictive measures to ensure that goods in limited supply would primarily satisfy domestic demand. An agreement between the Global North and the Global South for the production and distribution of vaccines failed to materialize.        

These pandemic-related developments have provided additional arguments for those asserting that the bounty generated by trade liberalization is only benefiting some countries and some people. The belief that trade liberalization generates a few "winners" and many "losers" has found fertile ground. If the inequitable distributional effects of trade are not carefully assessed and redressed, there is an increased risk of more constituencies turning their back on economic integration. 

A necessary step towards making trade contribute to sustainable development is to broaden the number of "winners." But how does one do that? One path is to ensure that trade includes and benefits women. 

Trade and Gender at the WTO: The Buenos Aires Declaration on Trade and Women’s Economic Empowerment - 2017

Some remarkable steps have been taken on women in trade at the WTO. The first move by WTO Members to entrench gender equality and women's empowerment issues inside the organization came from the Joint Declaration on Trade and Women’s Economic Empowerment. The Declaration was adopted in December 2017 by 127 WTO Members and Observers in the margins of the Buenos Aires Ministerial Conference. The commitments taken under the Declaration were to make trade and development policies more gender-responsive by sharing experiences on policies and programmes that encourage women’s participation in trade, best practices for conducting gender-based analysis of trade policies and monitoring the effects, and methods and procedures for collecting gender-disaggregated data. Members supporting the Declaration also committed to work together with the WTO to remove barriers to women’s economic empowerment and increase women's participation in trade, and ensure that Aid-for-Trade supports more gender-responsive trade policies. 

Although the commitments included in the Declaration were not bold enough to unleash daring changes, the relevance of the Declaration is undisputed: for the first time, gender equality issues were discussed at a high-level meeting dealing with trade policy, and a link was established between gender equality, women's economic empowerment, and trade. The adage "trade is gender-neutral" was overcome: supporters recognized that the distributional benefits of trade vary between women and men. 

The commitments and ambitions of the Buenos Aires Declaration were followed up by the establishment of an Informal Working Group on Trade and Gender (IWG) at the WTO in September 2020. Its overall aim is to intensify efforts to increase women's participation in international trade. 

The Joint Ministerial Declaration on the Advancement of Gender Equality and Women’s Economic Empowerment within Trade - 2021

At the initiative of the IWG, Members worked to formulate a new and more ambitious declaration. The Joint Ministerial Declaration on the Advancement of Gender Equality and Women’s Economic Empowerment within Trade was launched in December 2021.

It aims to: (i) continue to review, develop, and improve the collection of gender-disaggregated data on trade and gender as the basis for gender-responsive policies; (ii) utilize the findings of research initiatives to inform trade policy to support women’s economic empowerment; (iii) explore and analyze a gender perspective and women’s economic empowerment issues in the work of the WTO; and (iv) promote collaboration among international and regional organizations and national authorities for gender mainstreaming in Aid for Trade.

Is the new Declaration different from the previous one?

Contrary to the 2017 Buenos Aires Declaration, the new Declaration is a Ministerial Declaration, supported by 125 Members as of May 2022. Such a large support gives authority to it. 

None of the signatories, however, have expressed the aspiration to formalize the WTO debate on these issues into a WTO agreement on trade and gender, leaving, therefore, gender mainstreaming within the WTO as the best option. A welcome development in this sense would have been to conduct the WTO negotiations on fisheries, agriculture, and MSMEs through a gender lens in light of women's significant involvement in these sectors. However, Members missed the opportunity to do so. 

The Declaration recognizes that women continue to face many barriers, magnified by the COVID-19 pandemic, which prevent them from fully engaging in and benefiting from international trade. One specific barrier is singled out: unpaid care and domestic work. While this barrier is not the result of trade policy, it affects women's participation in trade. 

In a more straightforward manner than the Buenos Aires Declaration, the new Declaration sets up a link between GDP growth, on the one hand, and women’s strengthened participation in trade and in the labor market, and the recognition of women's economic rights, on the other. Conversely, it focuses less on the conditions under which women’s enhanced engagement in paid work and trade would contribute to bettering their lives and empowering them. Linking women's rights and their active participation in the economy to GDP growth - the "smart economics" approach - could become a powerful incentive for some Members to change their views on the role of women in international trade and in the economy.

One specific objective of the new Declaration, namely to "explore and analyze a gender perspective and women’s economic empowerment issues in the work of the WTO," seems to have the potential to instigate significant change within the WTO. If this commitment is fully implemented, it would imply that the analysis of the nexus between trade policy and gender equality will permeate all WTO work. This would allow the Members (and the organization) to explore the linkages between trade policy and other policies and get a clearer picture of how one policy can strengthen or conversely diminish the reach of another.

Would it have been realistically possible to reach a more ambitious result?

The Declaration does not address the root causes of gender inequality; however, this task was beyond its scope from the outset. Pursuing such a goal would have likely alienated many supporters and could have hindered WTO discussions on gender issues. Most Members were not ready to make a big leap and address issues such as women's access to education or to trade finance, or gender wage gaps. Many Members regarded these issues as pertaining to other fields of work and constituencies and were not seeking to use trade policy to guarantee women's rights and correct gender inequalities in their domestic frameworks. No country showed willingness to discuss whether flexibilities in the application of the WTO rules would be necessary to ensure positive outcomes for women. A "mild" and "step by step" approach made it possible to move forward. 

The non-signatories may have regarded the Declaration as not ambitious enough, or, conversely, may have decided that trade policy is not the most effective instrument to achieve gender equality and empower women. Priorities are different across countries.

Second-time lucky

The 2021 Joint Ministerial Declaration confirms the determination of the trade community to use trade policy as a tool to close gender gaps. It implicitly recognizes that to count women among the "winners" of trade liberalization, measures need to be taken to address the obstacles they face. However, it also seems to indicate that the solution to many of the outstanding problems remains within national frameworks, and that trade policy can be effective in tackling them only to a certain extent. No Member showed the willingness to engage in a debate about changing WTO rules and allow for the treatment of the issue of trade and gender equality, the kind of flexibility that Members enjoy when other issues - i.e. environmental preservation - are at stake.

A full understanding of the distributional effects of trade between women and men, and greater commitment to sharing the benefits of trade liberalization with those who have frequently been excluded from it, will reduce the risk of a backlash, and permit a renewed trust in globalization. Policymakers should keep this in mind while preparing post-pandemic strategies. Hopefully they will succeed in the next attempt to promote inclusive trade policies - second-time lucky.   

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