This article is the first in a series of short, Q&A format 'explainers' unpacking key trade issues produced for the Gender and Trade Coalition by Regions Refocus. It was written by Erica Levenson (Regions Refocus) with inputs from Fatimah Kelleher (Nawi–Afrifem Macroeconomics Collective), Mariama Williams (ILE), Hien Nguyen Thi (APWLD), and Senani Dehigolla (Regions Refocus).
- How Are Gender and Trade Connected?
At the core of the modern global economy is an array of trade and investment rules that have been designed by developed countries' elites and corporations. These interlinked rules reinforce the others' impacts on national economies, enabled by international finance and trade institutions such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and World Trade Organization (WTO) as enforcement mechanisms. From worsening human rights violations to degradation of the environment, the effects of trade and investment regimes impact every aspect of women's lives, exacerbating and creating inequalities based on hierarchies of class, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and gender identity.
Behind the scenes of global economic policymaking spaces, corporations and the financial sector set the policy menu: liberalization, deregulation, and privatization. Through predatory loan conditionalities, trade agreements, and other practices, international finance and trade institutions have enforced these policies and created 'enabling environments' for foreign investments. Trade tariffs have been lowered; investment possibilities and controls have been liberalized; and regulations on the financial sector, markets, and corporations have been dismantled while at the same time the rights of major corporations (especially intellectual property) have been increased (Aguirre, Eick, and Reese 2006; Hathaway 2020; Hursh and Henderson 2011). Cheap imports are dumped by transnational corporations and their subsidiaries, primary commodity export dependence is perpetuated, public goods and services are privatized, and social protections are cut, among other things (Hormeku-Ajei et al. 2022). These are the effects of 'successful' neoliberal policies, and in particular trade liberalization.
The manifestations of deeply unequal trade and investment governance regimes can be seen in worsening poverty rates and gender inequality; widening gaps between the world's richest and poorest countries, and the richest and poorest people; and adverse impacts on supposedly inalienable human rights, including access to education, secure housing, food security, and healthcare (Koechlin 2013; Navarro 2007; OHCHR 2015; Western et al. 2016). The severe impacts of trade and investment rules have been increasingly borne by people in developing countries, especially women (Grzanka, Mann, and Elliott 2016; Pearson 2019; UNCTAD 2014; UNCTAD and UN Women 2020).
Contemporary trade intensification, expansion, and privatization in the modern global economy relies on the systematic exploitation of women. Women form the backbone of the economy, in terms of both production and domestic labor: women are systematically underpaid, occupationally segregated, and marginalized, and their domestic labor is invisibilized and devalued. Gender inequality is not a question of happenstance but rather something that is necessary to the current function of the economy, in particular to trade. A critical analysis of trade from a feminist lens proves the urgency of recognizing the crucial role that gender inequality plays in sustaining global and national economies and illuminates key areas that serve as opportunities for policy interventions.
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