1. The integration of national economies worldwide has also been accelerated by the removal of trade barriers. The extensive literature on the intersection of gender and trade issues provides important insights that the discussions on FfD cannot and must not ignore. 

2. Trade liberalization has an extensive impact on the structure and scale of employment.  It has altered the distribution of resources - labour, land and others -- between a tradeable and a non-tradeable production sector and between business and household enterprises. Trade liberalization has also modified production relations both in the formal and informal sectors. This transformation has not yield gender-neutral results; it has different effects on men and women in terms of social burden, earnings, employment, and level of unpaid work. Neither is its effect uniform across countries and among women. The link between gender, trade and growth are bound to differ in economies with diverse economic structures and social norms. 

3. The growth in trade across countries is widely varied. Much of the enormous growth in trade over the last fifty years has occurred in developed countries and a select number of developing countries concentrated in East Asia and Latin America. By contrast, the sub-Saharan African countries and other primary goods exporting countries not only have difficulties in shifting to manufactured exports; they have also seen the purchasing power of their main exports decline. 

4. Any trade policy - whether to promote exports or to improve terms of trade- must take into account the fact that the pattern as well as the pace of growth of trade have gender dimensions in terms of employment and displacement effects, transformation of work and shifts in the production of non-marketed goods and services. These in turn affect how trade policy will address (or not address) social development objectives particularly poverty reduction and gender equality.

A. Gender Effects of Export Expansion

1. Export expansion can have potential benefits in terms of higher growth, more foreign exchange earnings, increased employment and improved women’s welfare. But this requires a careful assessment of the current structural inequities including gender inequality in the global trading system that can undermine rather than enable the sustainable human development.  Among the newly industrializing countries where the manufacturing sector is heavily oriented towards exports, the share of women workers in this sector has substantially increased. In fact, women provide the bulk of labour in the manufactured export sector. 

2. Whether the entry of women workers into the export sector leads to real empowerment of women or not depends on a host of social and economic factors. The export employment creation propensity, effect on the gender wage gap, and employment quality will determine the overall impact of export expansion. The quality of employment refers regularity of employment, working conditions, the rights to worker representation (through trade unions or other means), social protection, occupational risks, and the possibility of career advancement or skill upgrading.

3. In some developing countries, the employment effect of export orientation has been a significant turning point for women’s engagement in the market economy. This is true for example in the case of Bangladesh, the Dominican Republic, Thailand, Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Philippines and Mauritius. This has raised further the expectation that trade growth can help improve women’s status and well-being.

4. Indeed, there is evidence that paid employment has gradually weakened traditional gender values in some societies.  Young women workers, who must remit wages to their families, are able to accumulate savings, which improve their future personal prospects.  Also women’s wages in the modern export sector, in relation to what unskilled men earn on average, seem to confer women higher status and enhanced decision-making power within the household. More importantly, many women workers feel an enhanced sense of self-esteem as a result of wage employment.

5. However, an increase in women’s time in the labour market (or paid) work does not fully inform us about resulting changes in women’s (or their families) welfare. While access to an independent source of income tends to be highly valued by women not only for what it buys but also for the greater dignity it brings, it may also have serious costs that counter these beneficial effects.

6.  For instance, increased women’s participation in the labour market may be at the cost of longer workdays for women, more intensification of work at home and poor or unhealthy work conditions particularly if they continue to perform most of the unpaid labour in household work, child care and care of the sick. Recent studies show that much of the export-led growth experienced by the miracle growth economies has relied on the wage aspect of gender inequality. In particular, the offering of low wages that discriminate against women and the gendered wage gap in the east Asian countries have served as stimuli to investment. This raises the question of whether such trade policies are compatible with gender equality or not.

7. Another issue of concern is that increases in women’s employment tend to involve mainly poor quality jobs.  The employment of women in export processing zones in the Asian Pacific region, for example, has been predicated on gender bias that steer women into low-paying and/or dead-end jobs. Low wages and political docility appear to be the main factors behind the preferential demand for women workers. In addition, several studies have shown that the patterns of occupational segregation prevent women workers in these export industries from moving up the employment ladder.

8. The erosion of workers rights is allowed by governments and endorsed by multilateral institutions to serve as one of the main building blocks for increased competitiveness in the world market. As a result, working conditions in the export oriented industries such as textiles and electronics have deteriorated. Long hours, congested dormitory living conditions and exposure to hazardous substances are becoming common in the case of many women workers such as those in the Philippine electronic industries. Finally, the lack of codes of conduct that would raise awareness about and permit the taking of punitive actions against sexual harassment have made sexual abuse and gender violence common in the workplace.

9. In some countries, export expansion has had ambiguous effects on employment. In Latin America, export crop expansion has shifted women workers from permanent agricultural employment to seasonal employment.  Subsistence producers who are predominantly women in parts of the Caribbean, Central America and Africa, have lost their access to land with the rise of cash-crop production. The severe compression of living standards has created labour migration to impoverished urban zones. In parts of Africa where cash crop production is perceived to be men’s work domain, the displaced women are pushed to the informal sector.  

This analysis suggests that an important issue regarding trade liberalization is the regularity of jobs that trade creates for women.  Since the late eighties, the demand for women’s labour in manufactured exports sector has been weakening in Singapore, Taiwan, Mexico (maquiladoras) and Puerto Rico, as export production has become more skill and capital intensive.

 It is possible that trade can be an important source of generating financial resources for overcoming foreign exchange constraints and for employment growth, but to the extent that this strategy of financing development bases its success on the maintenance of gender inequalities, this frustrates a nation’s ability to achieve its social development objectives

The export promotion and other trade policies of governments should be modified and include women and gender in their formulation, implementation and evaluation in order to promote both sustainable economic growth and gender equality. Global competition in the commodities market should not occur as a “race-to-the-bottom” that is dependent on systematic discrimination against women and girls.

B. Gendered Effects of Import Expansion

In several developing countries, trade liberalization has led more towards the expansion of imports rather than an increase in exports.  Unregulated import liberalization can threaten the livelihood of women working in formerly protected areas of the domestic economy. For instance, in many OECD countries, trade expansion with developing countries has resulted in employment declines that disproportionately affect women. The increased competition from low cost Asian producers also has had the effect of displacing workers in local industries in developing countries.  Trade liberalization brought in a flood of cheap Asian imports in Zimbabwe and South Africa so that there is a decline in output and employment in textiles, wearing apparel and footwear industries in the 1990's.

The gender balance among the displaced has depended on the job distribution between men and women in the affected sectors. Jobs were lost because of trade liberalization in the female labour-intensive handloom industry in Indonesia and Sri Lanka.

The direct effects from import expansion on women’s employment in the informal sector have been mainly negative as well. Local producers lose their market share to cheaper imports and reduce the available jobs as a result. Imports are likely to displace women disproportionately in the informal sector because women outnumber men as workers, and as small and micro-entrepreneurs, women are more likely to be ill equipped to upgrade their productive activities in the face of increased competition. The scale of the adverse displacement effects of trade policies, unlike its positive employment effects, are not well studied so their precise scale is yet to be known.  Likewise, there is urgent need to examine further how trade policies directly affect the nature and level of informal sector and home-based contractual work where a significant proportion of the female labour force is employed.

 The above discussion suggests that general trade models that force all countries to liberalise trade can yield serious negative development impacts particularly with respect to women’s empowerment and welfare. Governments therefore should have the right to develop strategic and selective trade policies that will help attain the social development goals.  Strategic trade openness needs to be gender-sensitive to ensure that the gains from trade will promote gender equality and women’s empowerment.

Update on the recent third FfD Prep Com Meetings held in UN, New York:

The discussion of trade in the recent third PrepCom meeting on the FfD Conference and in the Facilitator’s draft outcome raise serious concerns from the perspective of gender equality and women’s empowerment, particularly in terms of the strong push for trade liberalization. The discussion of trade made no reference not adequate regard for the different effects of trade policies on women and men in terms of earnings, employment and level of unpaid work.  The draft outcome also calls for strengthening the role of the WTO in addressing trade issues and has viewed that environmental and workers’ rights concerns to be separate and outside the multilateral WTO-led trade negotiations. But unless gender concerns are incorporated into these decision-making processes, trade policies and multilateral trade agreements can yield serious, adverse development impacts particularly with respect to women’s empowerment and welfare.

It is also important to examine carefully the consistency of the paper’s call for improvement in “competitiveness and export diversification” (para.23) with the overall sustainable development objective of the FfD conference. Unless gender is taken explicitly into account, global competition and export promotion can easily occur as a ‘race-to the bottom’ that is dependent on the gender wage gap and gender bias that marginalize or steer women into low-paying and/or dead-end jobs in free trade zones and export-oriented sectors.

Similarly, unregulated import liberalization can threaten the livelihoods of women and other disadvantaged groups working in formerly protected areas of the domestic economy. Without appropriate safety nets and without short-term and long-term plans for resource provision, social infrastructure and state support for stable employment creation, the displaced workers may remain ill equipped to upgrade their productive activities in the face of increased global competition.  

Without a gender-aware monitoring and evaluation of the social and economic effects of export expansion and import liberalization, trade can undermine the attainment of a “sustainable, gender-sensitive, people-centered development” (para.3).

Recommendations
             Governments could consider:

• Conducting broad public debates and hearings to ensure that the concerns of women are heard and taken into account.
• Mainstreaming gender in the formulation, implementation and evaluation of trade agreements, treaties and initiatives, including the New African Initiative, to promote sustainable economic growth and gender equality. This would involve taking the following steps:
  
• Establishing a ‘gender desk’ with administrative power within the trade ministry and other monitoring bodies to ensure that gender concerns are addressed at the formulation and implementation stages of policy making; and
• Implementing a gender analysis of bilateral, regional and international trade negotiations and treaties including FTAA, Cotonou, TRIPs, TRIMs, GATs and ongoing WTO negotiations in order to identify potential opportunities and threats to the well-being of women and other disadvantaged groups in subsistence agriculture, displaced sectors and the informal sector.

In this context, governments and international organizations are therefore urged to:

* open opportunities for citizens and women’s organizations to initiate a broad public debate, public hearings to ensure that the concerns of women’s economic capacity and rights are taken into account.

* conduct and implement gender analysis of trade negotiations and treaties in order to identify potential opportunities and threats for women’s well-being as well as for other disadvantaged groups.

* develop gender-sensitive sectoral policies to close the wage gap, address discrimination in promotion, and hiring, as well as various forms of sexual harassment, and guarantee equal access to training and education.

*collect gender-disaggregated data to measure and monitor the impact of international trade policies and trade liberalization measures on women and their families, especially those living in poverty.

* make provisions for regional trading blocs and international structures and conventions to adopt gender policy as well as mechanisms for implementing that policy, including establishment of a gender desk within trade organizations and the implementation of administrative and budgetary measures to support the promotion of gender equity.

Dr Maria S.  Floro is UNIFEM adviser on Gender and Financing for Development. She is an Associate Professor in the Economics Department at American University, lecturing on Gender and Economics, Development Finance and Banking, and Economic Development. Her recent research work includes gender and savings, measurement of unpaid work, women home workers and coping strategies in the informal sector, globalization and gender, and the gender dimensions of the financial crisis in East Asia. Maria Floro has also worked with several international organizations including the United Nations Development Program, UN Economic and Social Council Secretariat, the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women in the Philippines and the Inter-American Development Bank, and has given gender training workshops to scientists and economists as well as Philippine women’s groups and grassroots organizations. Maria Floro can be contacted at: mfloro@american.edu

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Compiled and edited by Ingeborg P. Eliasen