Establishing clear links between trade policy and overarching goals, including gender equality and women's economic empowerment, is critical to contribute to making trade a tool for sustainable development. Closing gender gaps in the economic domain will not only advance women's economic empowerment but also support progress towards achieving the SDGs.
Trade policy is not gender neutral. The distributional outcomes of trade vary between women and men. Moreover, women are not a homogenous group and, therefore, they are differently impacted by trade depending on their income, position in the labour market, educational level, ethnicity, etc. If trade policies are designed without taking into account their gender-specific outcomes, these policies risk magnifying existing gender gaps.
There are at least three ways for making trade policy more gender sensitive. The first one is to complement the assessment of the risks and benefits of trade policy for a country as a whole with an analysis of its potential impacts on those who risk being "left behind", including women and girls. Such an ex-ante gender impact assessment may lead to the re-thinking of planned trade reforms, may point to the need for accompanying measures, or may indicate the need for scaling up the trade measures because of their expected positive impact. UNCTAD has developed a methodological approach for the ex-ante gender impact assessment of trade reforms, the Trade and Gender Toolbox, and has successfully tested it in East Africa. The second way to make trade policy more responsive to the specific need of women is to include gender considerations in the text of the trade measures, including trade agreements. Recently, gender issues have started to be addressed in specific trade and gender chapters of trade agreements. This is for instance the case of the Chile-Uruguay and Canada-Chile FTAs.
Finally, a third way to make trade policy more gender sensitive points to the need of ensuring policy coherence between trade and other policies and an enabling environment at all levels. For instance, developing countries' participation in GVCs have created large-scale employment and skill development opportunities for women. Such opportunities have, however, been accompanied by some risks that need to be addressed by appropriate flanking measures.
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UNCTAD events on the margins of the Eleventh WTO Ministerial ConferenceWatch this session on YouTube
