Trade Agreements and Women Transcending Barriers

With more and more countries including provisions on women's concerns in their trade agreements, Trade Agreements and Women: Transcending Barriers explores how women's empowerment and trade liberalization interact, overlap, and converge.

Tapping into examples from across the globe, and taking into consideration the diverse political, economic, social, and legal contexts of different countries, Amrita Bari poses and answers some key questions: What role can trade agreements play with regard to women's empowerment, and what limitations do they have? Have previous efforts to include women through trade agreements been genuinely responsive to the needs of women, or have they been merely symbolic? What, ultimately, makes a trade agreement responsive to the needs of women, and how can countries achieve this in their own trade agreements?

In answering these questions, Bahri carves out a roadmap, with concrete recommendations, for the future of women-related trade provisions, and offers much-needed guidance for legal scholars, trade negotiators, and policymakers involved in preparing, revising, and inclusively negotiating trade regulations.

Amrita Bahri, Associate Professor of Law; Co-Chair for Mexico, Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México; WTO Chair Program

Dr. Amrita Bahri is Associate Professor of International Trade Law at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) and Co-Chair Professor for the WTO Chair Program (Mexico). In her research and publications, she explores how trade laws, agreements, and policies can empower marginalized groups, especially women. As a founding member of the WTO Gender Research Hub, Amrita has worked on trade and women-related projects with various countries and international organizations, including the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, the International Trade Centre, and the World Trade Organization. While collaborating with the ITC team, Amrita designed the first framework to measure the gender responsiveness of trade agreements. She also serves on the editorial board of prestigious academic journals and is among the candidates appointed by the European Commission to chair the Expert Panel Proceedings on Trade and Sustainable Development.