trade policy brief
Trade and Gender
May 2021
Trade can affect women and men differently, so the impacts of trade policies on women as workers, consumers and entrepreneurs need to be better understood rade lowers prices, benefitting low income households where women are disproportionately T found, while trade facilitation particularly benefits women-owned businesses, which tend to be smaller and less well-financed than those owned by men ssessing the impact of market opening under trade agreements requires an understanding of A the sectors in which women work and own businesses rade agreements can include provisions to promote women’s participation in trade, which can T lead to greater economic growth and competitiveness, and reduce inequality The OECD has developed a new framework to help countries assess the gender impacts of their trade policies and to help guide efforts to promote women’s engagement in trade policymaking.
How do trade and trade policies impact women? Trade can affect women and men differently, largely due to differences in initial conditions. For example, women and men work in different sectors: in OECD countries, women tend to work more in services than manufacturing or agriculture and they often comprise the majority of workers in services that are less traded such as health, education and public administration. That said, when “indirect” participation in trade is taken into account – that is, sectors that provide inputs to other sectors that export, the percentage of women involved in trade more than doubles (Figure 1). Trade agreements can open foreign markets to goods and services in sectors with a high proportion of female workers orbusiness owners, creating new opportunities for women. Conversely, agreements can also create new competition from imports in sectors where women work, posing competitiveness and adjustment pressures. In both cases, the impacts on women will also depend on the extent to which domestic policies support adjustment or the enabling conditions to support women’s ability to take advantage of new trade opportunities.
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Indeed, trade policies impact women-owned businesses differently to those owned by men because womenowned businesses tend to be smaller, younger and less well financed. Women entrepreneurs also have less access to the professional networks that can provide mentoring and coaching, and they generally have less management experience than men, largely due to the ‘glass ceiling’. Small businesses -- where women are concentrated -are less able to navigate complex and non-transparent administrative procedures in order to import and export than larger firms that have more specialised staff or can more easily hire the help they need. Complex bureaucratic processes thus particularly inhibit the ability of small firms, which includes many women-owned firms, to engage in international trade. Another way trade impacts individuals and households is by providing a greater variety of goods and services at lower prices. In principle, lower prices impact women and men similarly. However, women are more likely to be poor—due to the gender wage gap that is prevalent in every country, due to lower pensions secured by women
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