Gender, Development, and Trade

Women all over the world are increasingly joining the bottom rungs of the global supply chain. Whether by picking fruit in Chile, processing cashews in Mozambique, sewing in China's export Processing Zones, or providing biotech companies with indigenous knowledge in India, women's labor and skill is a crucial element of the scaling-up of globalized production processes. It can be argued that increased opportunities to join the cash economy are a positive development for women, whose additional income has the potential to increase both their status and the well-being of the family. But what are the hidden costs of new trade regimes, and do they outweigh the benefits? What do women stand to lose and how do trade agreements on intellectual property, movement of migrant labor, and agriculture potentially entrench overall poverty and women's over-burdened gender role further? Women are finding ways to influence national and international trade policy agendas in developed countries such as the United States and Australia, and are linking globally at global forums such as Cancun. Contributors to this volume cover issues in countries including China, Botswana, Mozambique, and Mexico and explore some of the many dimensions of gender, gender relations and trade in local and cross-border enterprise, regional agreements, and the WTO. Mariama Williams gives us an overview of the key issues from Cancun as they affect women and gender reforms. Authors such as Marceline White, Alison Symington, and Suman Sumai look at particular ways in which trade agreements can lead countries into contradictory positions regarding their commitments to other social and legal treaties and national policies. Eleonore Kaufman writes about how trade incentives to encourage freedom of movement for workers and migration policies co-exist. Kate Raworth and Thalia Kidder and Annie Delaney and Pun Ngai explore the hidden costs of casualized and informal labor regimes to women. Peggy Ntseane discusses the different trade strategies used by women and men at the level of small and medium enterprise.