Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T19:18:27.751Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

C7 - Gender equality in trade

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 July 2011

Haifa Fahoum Al Kaylani
Affiliation:
Arab International Women's Forum
Jean-Pierre Lehmann
Affiliation:
IMD
Fabrice Lehmann
Affiliation:
Evian Group at IMD
Get access

Summary

Forget China, India and the internet: economic growth is driven by women.

The Economist, April 2006

At around 30 per cent, the ratio of world trade to GDP is higher today than ever before. While trade is bringing immense gains to increasing numbers of people across the world, a major challenge for policy makers aiming to reduce poverty and inequality is to enable a more equitable distribution of these gains. This requires understanding and accounting for factors that prevent some regions, countries and social groups from benefiting equally from expanding trade flows and their concomitant benefits.

Gender is a key factor linked to poverty, particularly with regard to patterns of employment in the labour market. Trade benefits are differentiated between women and men, and between various groups of women, impacting gender equality as well as poverty reduction. While trade expansion is improving employment opportunities open to women and increasing their income-earning possibilities, vulnerable women often lack access to favourable employment opportunities and disproportionately occupy irregular and insecure positions with low earnings and few labour and social protection regulations.

Despite this, research findings show a close correlation between greater female participation in society and improved economic outcomes and indicate that women-led businesses increase economic diversity and productivity as well as bring wider human resource development. Women's role in trade expansion is thus central to economic and social development due to their integrity and ingenuity.

Type
Chapter
Information
Peace and Prosperity through World Trade
Achieving the 2019 Vision
, pp. 158 - 163
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×