{ "title": "Trade Drives Gender Equality and Development", "sourceUrl": "https://www.imf.org/en/publications/fandd/issues/2023/06/trade-drives-gender-equality-and-development-rocha-piermartini", "canonical": "https://www.imf.org/en/publications/fandd/issues/2023/06/trade-drives-gender-equality-and-development-rocha-piermartini", "overlayPath": "/en/publications/fandd/issues/2023/06/trade-drives-gender-equality-and-development-rocha-piermartini/index.md", "summary": "International trade can benefit women, especially in developing economies, but the rewards depend on determined policy action", "sections": [ { "heading": "Framing and motivation", "content": "- Gender equality is both a fundamental right and an economic imperative; reducing gender gaps yields larger gains in developing economies because levels of inequality are higher and potential rewards from closing gaps are greater.\n- International trade is positioned as a promising policy lever to boost women’s economic participation, reduce inequality, and expand access to skills and education.\n- Research progress has been constrained by a dearth of sex-disaggregated data on consumption, occupations, and sectoral employment; the World Bank–WTO report \"Women and Trade\" seeks to address this gap and provide a framework for analysis." }, { "heading": "How trade affects women — empirical findings", "content": "- Exporters employ more women:\n - In developing economies, women comprise 33 percent of the workforce of exporting firms versus 24 percent in non-exporting firms.\n - Firms in global value chains or with foreign investors employ on average 11 to 12 percent more women compared with other firms.\n- Trade raises women’s wages and can reduce economic inequality:\n - Doubling the value of exports in a country’s manufacturing sector would increase the average female wage share from 24 to roughly 30 percent.\n - World Bank models on the African Continental Free Trade Area suggest that by 2035 wages for skilled and unskilled female labor could be 4 percent and 3.7 percent higher (relative to baseline), compared with a 3.2 percent increase for male workers at all skill levels.\n- Trade creates better jobs and formalization advantages for women:\n - 13 percent of women in highly integrated sectors work informally, compared with 20 percent in less integrated sectors.\n - For men, informality falls from 9.5 percent in less integrated sectors to 5.0 percent in highly integrated sectors.\n- Trade openness increases women’s incomes and consumption:\n - Eliminating import tariffs raises average real income for female-headed households compared with male-headed households in more than three-quarters of the 54 developing economies analyzed.\n - On average, real income gains from removing import tariffs would be 2.5 percent greater for households headed by women than for those headed by men.\n - In countries such as Burkina Faso and Cameroon, this increase is equivalent to one year’s spending on education or health." }, { "heading": "Global trends expanding opportunities for women", "content": "- Expansion of services:\n - Services employ a larger share of women than agriculture and manufacturing.\n - Services trade is expanding faster than goods trade; services now create the most jobs and do so earlier in development.\n - International Labour Organization statistics: in 2000, 46 percent of all services sector workers were women, rising to about 58 percent by 2020.\n- Global value chains (GVCs):\n - GVCs create better jobs and connectivity for female-run micro and small businesses and small-scale farmers.\n - Women in GVCs have a 10 percentage point higher probability of being in the formal workforce than women in sectors not highly integrated.\n- Digital trade and platforms:\n - Digital technologies help women overcome constraints (limited access to finance, education, mobility, flexibility).\n - Example from platform data: about half of the entrepreneurs on Alibaba platforms are women, compared with a quarter among all entrepreneurs in China.\n - Growth in online education and health services increases access and employment opportunities in sectors with lower discrimination." }, { "heading": "Barriers and policy frictions that limit gains", "content": "- Tariff bias and \"pink tariffs\":\n - Female-intensive sectors (food and beverages, textiles and apparel) on average face higher tariffs on inputs.\n - In India, this \"pink tariff\" amounts to 6 percentage points.\n- Nontariff measures and fixed-cost burdens:\n - Product standards and regulatory measures often impose fixed costs that disproportionately affect small and medium enterprises—frequently women-owned—compared with large firms.\n - Small exporters lack specialized teams, export infrequently or in small batches, and face costly administrative procedures; additional barriers include limited access to trade financing and higher exposure to extortion and physical harassment at the border.\n- Complementary constraints:\n - Time constraints and limited geographic mobility due to family caregiving roles reduce women’s ability to capture trade gains unless addressed by coordinated policy." }, { "heading": "Policy recommendations and reforms", "content": "- Trade policy and facilitation:\n - Adjust tariff policy to close gender gaps in input tariffs.\n - Streamline regulatory requirements and trade facilitation to reduce fixed-cost burdens for small exporters.\n- Broader enabling policies:\n - Improve access to education, financial resources, digital technologies, and information for women.\n - Design coordinated and complementary policies that address specific barriers (time constraints, mobility limits) to ensure women can maximize trade benefits.\n- Labor market and adjustment policies:\n - Implement complementary labor market policies to help women acquire new skills or relocate as comparative advantages shift due to trade-related disruptions.\n- International cooperation:\n - Advance cooperation on gender-informed trade policy and trade facilitation to promote gender equality without necessarily targeting women explicitly." }, { "heading": "Risks, recent shocks, and the need for continued data and research", "content": "- Pandemic impacts:\n - In 2020 the pandemic destroyed 4.2 percent of women's employment worldwide (a drop of 54 million jobs), compared with 3 percent for men (a drop of 60 million jobs).\n - Women lost $800 billion in income (not accounting for informal earnings).\n - Pandemic shocks disproportionately affected sectors that employ more women and increased caregiving burdens due to childcare and school closures, though teleworking mitigated some effects.\n - Pandemic-driven investment in digital technologies may expand women’s opportunities in trade.\n- Geopolitical and protectionist risks:\n - Rising protectionist pressures, GVC reshaping, and geopolitical tensions threaten to reverse gender-equality gains; open trade will be essential to a gender-inclusive recovery.\n- Research and data needs:\n - Additional studies of trade’s impact on women are required to design targeted policies; this analysis depends on more and better gender-disaggregated data.\n\nSource: F&D Magazine, June 2023 — Nadia Rocha and Roberta Piermartini.\n\n---\n\n Content in this bundle\n\n- Trade Drives Gender Equality and Development\n - Trade Drives Gender Equality and Development (Markdown version){rel=\"alternate\" type=\"text/markdown\"}\n - Trade Drives Gender Equality and Development (PDF){rel=\"external\" type=\"application/pdf\"}\n\n---\n\nSource: https://www.imf.org/en/publications/fandd/issues/2023/06/trade-drives-gender-equality-and-development-rocha-piermartini" } ], "bullets": [ "[Markdown version](/en/publications/fandd/issues/2023/06/trade-drives-gender-equality-and-development-rocha-piermartini/index.md)", "[Structured JSON version](/en/publications/fandd/issues/2023/06/trade-drives-gender-equality-and-development-rocha-piermartini/index.json)", "[Bundle manifest](/en/publications/fandd/issues/2023/06/trade-drives-gender-equality-and-development-rocha-piermartini/bundle-manifest.json)", "Authors: NADIA ROCHA, ROBERTA PIERMARTINI", "Published: June 1, 2023", "Gender equality is both a fundamental right and an economic imperative; reducing gender gaps yields larger gains in developing economies because levels of inequality are higher and potential rewards from closing gaps are greater.", "International trade is positioned as a promising policy lever to boost women’s economic participation, reduce inequality, and expand access to skills and education.", "Research progress has been constrained by a dearth of sex-disaggregated data on consumption, occupations, and sectoral employment; the World Bank–WTO report \"Women and Trade\" seeks to address this gap and provide a framework for analysis.", "Exporters employ more women:", "Trade raises women’s wages and can reduce economic inequality:", "Trade creates better jobs and formalization advantages for women:", "Trade openness increases women’s incomes and consumption:", "Expansion of services:", "Global value chains (GVCs):", "Digital trade and platforms:", "Tariff bias and \"pink tariffs\":", "Nontariff measures and fixed-cost burdens:", "Complementary constraints:", "Trade policy and facilitation:", "Broader enabling policies:", "Labor market and adjustment policies:", "International cooperation:", "Pandemic impacts:", "Geopolitical and protectionist risks:", "Research and data needs:", "**Trade Drives Gender Equality and Development**" ], "related": [ { "title": "Trade Drives Gender Equality and Development", "role": "document", "sourceUrl": "https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/publications/fandd/article/2023/june/rocha.pdf", "summary": { "path": "/-/media/files/publications/fandd/article/2023/june/rocha.pdf.md", "mime": "text/markdown" }, "binary": { "path": "/-/media/files/publications/fandd/article/2023/june/rocha.pdf", "mime": "application/pdf" } } ], "alternates": { "markdown": "/en/publications/fandd/issues/2023/06/trade-drives-gender-equality-and-development-rocha-piermartini/index.md", "json": "/en/publications/fandd/issues/2023/06/trade-drives-gender-equality-and-development-rocha-piermartini/index.json", "bundleManifest": "/en/publications/fandd/issues/2023/06/trade-drives-gender-equality-and-development-rocha-piermartini/bundle-manifest.json" }, "generatedAtUtc": "2026-09-15T18:39:27.449Z" }