Becky Blab

The recent Gender and Trade Newsletter disseminated by the Commonwealth Secretariat has two articles which are particularly interesting to me. 1. An Interview with Dr. Christa Wichterich I had met this woman at the Women in Development Europe (WIDE) conference on ‘EU bilateral and regional free trade agreements­: bringing women to the centre of the [...]

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Thanks to Dhaka’s The Daily Star for making World Tourism Day a newsworthy event. The theme is “Tourism opens doors for women,” in recognition of the opportunities tourism creates for women entrepreneurs and workers. Despite the many gains tourism has offered to women, gender stereotyping and sex tourism pose problems. Data suggest that women’s role [...]

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This post at Ultra Violet highlights the dire situation of garment factory workers in Bangalore, giving a a new perspective to the city’s reputation as India’s Silicon Valley. Both exports and the domestic market are taking off, and the apparel industry is booming–but who are getting the benefits? Surely not the 80% of workers who [...]

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The Ministry of Women and Child Development is developing gender budgeting manuals to ensure that women related schemes receive adequate funds.  The manuals will be designed to reinforce the practice of gender budgeting at all levels of governance. The WCD Ministry is assessing the impact of gender budgeting by other Ministries. The WCD Minister, Renuka [...]

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Japanese PM Abe has had a productive week here, forging new ties with India to reduce Japan’s reliance on China. There are big plans in the works, from a Delhi-Mumbai trade corridor to nuclear power and cooperation on environmental protection (see my post on why the last two aren’t necessarily linked). And they will be [...]

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