The EU is adding a new dimension to its trade policy: empowering women. That involves pioneering a gender chapter in the coming new EU-Chile free trade agreement.
Despite recent progress in reducing gender inequality globally in the economy, enormous gaps remain. World output could add 12 trillion US dollars by 2025 if there was a significant move towards gender parity in economic outcomes, a recent McKinsey study estimates.
The globalisation of production has enabled millions women in developing countries to access low-skilled jobs that pay better and are safer than jobs in the informal economy. Jobs in global value chains, with many women doing them, have significantly contributed to reducing poverty. Yet high-paying skilled jobs and entrepreneurship remain out of reach to many women in many countries.
Gender inequality markers in trade include the basic fact that women still do not enjoy equal legal rights than men in the law. Among 173 countries surveyed by the World Bank, 155 had at least one law that disadvantaged women. Other gender inequality markers for women include unequal pay and discrimination at work, difficulties in accessing property and capital – including being allowed to own a business – and education and skills gaps.
Trade policy is now increasingly called upon to help narrow that gap.
After a few pioneering steps in South America, the World Trade Organization and the EU are beginning to take the agenda on board.
Chile and Uruguay signed a trade agreement in 2016 that includes a chapter on gender equality. The chapter commits the two parties to ensure they properly enforce their own laws on gender and comply with relevant international conventions.
The Chile-Uruguay trade deal also establishes a committee on gender equality that will ensure there is a formal cooperation mechanism between these two countries on the topic. The approach was pioneered by Chile’s female president Michelle Bachelet.
The WTO is gathering more data on the gender dimension of international trade : a report is expected in 2017. The WTO is also launching a woman-focused small-and-medium sized enterprise dimension in its trade facilitation activities.
Canada is preparing a proposal to the WTO to work on women in services trade ahead of the WTO ministerial conference in Buenos Aires in December 2017.
EU gears up on gender and trade
The EU is also trying to move on the gender front. « Our trade agreements can do more », said EU trade commissioner Cecilia Malmström.
Recent EU free trade agreements include chapters on sustainable development in which the partners are asked to comply with International Labour Organization core conventions notably on equal pay in employment and discrimination.
A gender dimension is also included in the EU’s ‘GSP Plus’ programme for developing economies that abide by specific international conventions. « If emerging markets want the most preferential access to the EU market they must sign up to the United Nations conventions on eliminating discrimination against women”», explained Cecilia Malmström.
The Commission is reviewing its 2015 Trade for All strategy, which vowed to make the EU’s trade policy more values-driven. The Commission is expected to complement the text with a gender dimension. The Commission is also launching its own research on trade, jobs and gender that will be, “our first quantitative assessment” on the topic, Malmström said.
The EU is about to launch negotiations to modernise its almost two decade old free trade agreement with Chile. “I want to include a gender chapter there and see what we can learn from the Chilean experience”, said Malmström. The trade commissioner wants to « see if that can be a pilot project for us in the European Union to take forward in other trade negotiations ».
Two MEPs in the European Parliament, Eleonora Forenza (Italy, GUE/NL) Malin Björk (Sweden, same group) have also launched preparatory work on gender in the EU’s trade agreements that will lead to a European Parliament report in several months.
Call for more
While the WTO and the EU advance slowly, focusing on gathering data and pilot projects, Arancha Gonzalez, who heads the International Trade Center in Geneva is pushing for more specific preferential measures for women-owned businesses trading across borders.
Gonzalez launched the SheTrades programme, a project that aims to connect 1 million women-owned small businesses across the world to global markets. The programme calls for the preferential treatment of women owned SMEs in government public procurement and in corporate procurement.
“Public procurement should be more inclusive”, said Arancha Gonzalez. “I am aware this is a sensitive topic in the city of Brussels but I think we have to open that can and see the worms that are inside”, the ITC’s chief said.
