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 debate’. She has published an excellent document called ‘Economic growth without social justice: EU­-India trade negotiations and their implications for social development and gender justice.

Highlights of the interview:

As trade relations and trade liberalisation are not gender neutral, the understanding of gender mainstreaming is that trade rules should be gender sensitised and each sector must reflect specific trade-gender-linkages. This should include the gender segmentation of markets, employment, wage, the formal- informal-division, the implications for state revenues and fiscal policies, the impact on prices of food, consumer goods, and supply of basic provisions such as water and energy supply to private households, and the gendered access to public services. Gender issues can not be confined to the sustainability chapter in the FTAs as they can not be confined to one political department or ministry. Inter-ministerial co-ordination and inter-sectoral linkages are a precondition for gender mainstreaming.

The first objective of gender advocacy is a demystification of the seemingly gender neutrality of trade liberalisation and a highlighting of the hidden costs, and adverse effects. What is most needed presently in order to create awareness amongst policy makers and in the public:

• Gendered value chain analysis
• Factoring of development objectives and gender indicators into the trade impact assessment & into the sustainability impact assessment
• Identification of a pro-poor and gender-aware list of sensitive products
• Expose incoherence between development goals such as women’s economic empowerment and trade policies.

2. UNCTAD XII

Key outcomes of the Commonwealth parallel event on Trade and Gender at UNCTAD XII:

1. A need for increased capacity building among policy makers is required to ensure a gender lens is applied to all stages of trade policy formulation, implementation and negotiation;
2. Creating an enabling environment for market access for women producers and workers through strengthening trade support services, such as financial and business services, and developing gender sensitive projects targeted at increased export promotion;
3. Adoption of a gender sensitive trade-related regulatory framework both at regional and international level;
4. National level policies should provide incentives for poor women on the one hand to access global markets and on the other to protect their livelihoods from the negative impacts of globalisation;
5. Increased involvement in the formulation of trade policies and in global negotiations by women at all levels;
6. Increased public debate and access to information on trade processes and agreements;
7. Strengthening data analysis and gathering and other empirical evidence on gender towards inclusion within policy making;
8. Strengthening access to education, information and technologies for women and girls.