2021 - The Year Trade Turned to Women
Mia Mikic is a trade economist, board member of the Friends of Multilateralism Group, Advisor at Large for the Asia-Pacific Research and Training Network on Trade (ARTNeT).
2021 has been a challenging year, to say the least. It started with some broad optimism on the wings of the COVID-19 vaccine discoveries and a change in the U.S. administration. The global trade system was still hurting after a year of pandemic-driven challenges to international trade flows, several years of a soft trade war and not-so-soft unilateral actions of major trading economies on top of a decade of multilateral negotiations’ hibernation, the collapse of the Appellate Body by the US, and a series of other outstanding dispute, transparency, and negotiating issues. And if all that was not enough, the WTO, an institution established to help trade flow smoothly, freely, and predictably, was left to function without a Director-General for several months while global trade was facing so many challenges.
Not surprisingly, eyes had turned to the end of 2021 when finally, the 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12) of the WTO was due to take place. The widespread expectation among trade watchers was that MC12 would tackle at least some of the long-standing issues affecting the performance of the global trade system. Due to the pandemic, these plans were upended, but 2021 will forever be remembered as the year when trade turned to women. Not only are the key global trade institutions all helmed by women, but their memberships’ collective mindset shifted to allow for the removal of the gender-neutral blindfolds and concrete advances in the informal work program among several WTO Members and Observers to incorporate trade and gender linkages. Yet, we could have done much more, primarily, to convert aspirations of women’s economic empowerment and gender equality into the actual (and, ideally, binding) legal texts of the agreements under discussion. It is vital to maintain the momentum of 2021 and build on it in 2022 and beyond.
The pandemic effect
The pandemic exposed many issues and problems in national and global economies that were customarily swept under the rug while everything was “normal” (including the need to redefine what “normal” should be). Perhaps the most obvious reveal was the level of economic interdependence between countries and role of supply chains. We were also forced to recognize that there is no place on the planet free of poverty, inequalities, environmental problems, institutional failures, market failures, fiscal constraints, or violence. The crisis’ realities quickly challenged universal aspirations of continuing to make progress towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The adages that “we are all in this together” and “no one is safe until all are safe” quickly became standing phrases in political speeches despite everyone expecting (and accepting) that many individuals and governments would still pursue “me or my country first” policies.
Soon in the pandemic, it became clear that one social group in particular would face harsher impacts from the crisis: women. Much evidence has been gathered since then to substantiate the claim that women have been carrying a larger burden throughout the pandemic than men, due to factors such as the ‘shecession’, job informality, an increase in gender-based violence, the sharper reduction of access to education and medical services, unequal care-giving responsibilities and the need to provide unpaid care to others, to give some examples. According to the International Labor Organization (ILO) (2021), globally, women’s employment declined by 4.2% in 2020, representing a drop of 54 million jobs, while men’s employment declined by 3% that same year. The ILO also forecasts that in 2021, women will still be 25.4% less likely to be employed than men. While fiscal stimuli have been quick and large (both on average and in relative terms), only a few of the resources spent on mitigating the crisis were targeted specifically at women’s economic empowerment. The ILO found that out of the 580 fiscal and economic measures to help businesses weather the crisis in over 130 countries, only 12% of the measures were targeted at strengthening women’s economic security by channeling resources to female-dominated sectors.
The gender-differentiated impact of the pandemic was also evident in trade entrepreneurship. Even before the pandemic, women faced higher obstacles and thus higher trade costs than men, preventing them from accessing international markets and establishing themselves as traders. Pre-pandemic, women-led businesses faced 13% higher trade costs than those led by men, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and this ratio has only worsened during the pandemic.
Shattering the global trade institutions’ glass ceiling
The gaping gender inequality in trade has long been in conflict with the objectives of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, in particular Goal 5 on Gender Equality, to mention two initiatives at the global level. The departure from gender-blind trade was made when several WTO Members and Observers endorsed the Joint Declaration on Trade and Women’s Economic Empowerment within Trade in 2017. This is often known as the Buenos Aires Declaration, as it was agreed on the margins of the MC11 held there. The Declaration was meant to be a turning point in placing gender on the trade agenda of WTO Members and beyond. Initially supported by 118 Members and Observers, this number rose to 127 in late 2021, which still leaves about one-third of the organization’s Members and Observers sitting on the fence, including India, South Africa, and the United States. While initiatives with less membership proceeded with structured discussions, and some converted into negotiations, the trade and gender work remained focused on organizing workshops, most likely with the aim to raise sufficient awareness among the membership on the linkages between trade and gender.
Finally, an Informal Working Group (IWG) on Trade and Gender was inaugurated on 23 September 2020, and the Draft Work Plan with a schedule of activities was adopted in February 2021. Throughout 2021, the IWG held six meetings. The work of the group revolved around the four pillars stipulated in the Buenos Aires Declaration, and meetings were planned to feature members’ experiences (best practices) in these areas: 1) the promotion of women’s economic empowerment, 2) the most relevant recent research by the WTO Secretariat and its partners, 3) the delivery of Aid for Trade activities, and 4) efforts to clarify the meaning of “gender lens” and how it applies to the work of the WTO.
After an active year, at its first-anniversary meeting on 23 September 2021, the IWG announced its draft MC12 outcome document. This contained recommendations for WTO Members to continue work on increasing women's participation in international trade. The intention of this document is to convince Members to include “women's economic empowerment issues into the regular work of WTO bodies, improve the impact of Aid for Trade on women by mainstreaming gender considerations into programmes and strategies, increase data collection, and coordinate research.” If adopted, this proposal will help formalize the work on Trade and Gender in the WTO and could encourage other Members to join, potentially to the point of transforming into a multilateral process rather than a plurilateral one. There would be benefits and costs of this switch, not the least due to the much slower and bumpy pace of multilateral decision-making, especially when compared to relative speed seen in the plurilateral initiatives.
The success seen in turning the Buenos Aires Declaration, from its early fact-finding work, into an active work plan with an increasing number of Members is a huge step towards building the fundamentals for gender-responsive trade policymaking. 2021 should be remembered for that. Notwithstanding, this result, while both important and awesome, is dwarfed by some other achievements that 2021 brought in the context of ‘women in trade.’
Arguably (really?) the path-changing event was the appointment of Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as the first woman to serve as Director-General of the WTO. After her confirmation, she then proceeded to make history by appointing two women as Deputy-Directors-General (or 50% of all deputy positions) which was another clear break from the past. The improvements with respect to the women’s share in the management positions within the WTO Secretariat did not stop there. At present, 6 out of 17 divisional directors are women. That is almost double the share of 18%, as reported in 2020 by Mia Mikic and Vanika Sharma.
Two other institutions in Geneva responsible for work in the area of trade and development -the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the International Trade Centre (ITC)– are also led by women. While ITC has had several women serving as executive directors since 2006, fFor UNCTAD, similarly as to the WTO, it is the first. 2021 indeed must be remembered as the year when the glass ceiling was shattered – at least when it comes to top global trade-focused institutions.
The way forward
However, there are still gender imbalances in the multilateral scenario. With respect to the gender composition of the Members’ representatives in the WTO, the numbers also show an improvement, although small. At present, no woman chairs any of the Councils, and less than half of the committees and subsidiary bodies are chaired by women. These chairs come from the 40 women ambassadors (24.4% of all ambassadors) from the Members, and 4 from WTO Observers (16% of all Observers), which is still significant underrepresentation of women in the most important global trade governance body.
While the appointment of women to lead work on trade policy and in trade and development is necessary, it is not sufficient to change the entrenched culture of accepting gender inequality as a norm. What is equally necessary is the conversion of current trade policies and practices, especially trade rules, into gender-responsive ones that support opportunities for women to work and engage in trade. This can take the form of reducing procedural hurdles, enhancing access to finance, and increasing digital inclusion. Given that, since 1995, the main avenue of new trade rule-making was through the bilateral and regional trade agreements, it is really disappointing that only a handful of those agreements (out of hundreds completed and put into force in this time) actually consider provisions that specifically consider women’s economic empowerment through trade and gender equality. Examples of trade agreements that have incorporated such features are the bilateral agreements concluded between Chile-Uruguay, Canada-Chile, Argentina-Chile, Chile-Brazil, and Canada-Israel. At the regional level, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and the Global Trade and Gender Arrangement are important milestones. While these agreements (and some additional arrangements and protocols) are noteworthy, they still stay on the side of soft law, without making hard binding trade rules.
Moreover, despite the overwhelming support for the work program of the IWG at the WTO, only one of the other joint statement initiatives even mentions gender or women. The unique deviation is the recently concluded negotiation on domestic regulation in services That text inserts – as the very last entry - a provision excluding measures that would discriminate between men and women, although it also inserts a footnote 18 which softens the provision. From that perspective, one would be obliged to sharply criticize Members’ work on incorporating gender responsiveness into the design of new and improved trade rules. Much more could and should be achieved, and if it is really impossible to obtain progress among WTO Members in either plurilateral or multilateral negotiations, then like-minded Members should be using the same channels they use to promote other trade issues that are often seen as ‘core’ and ‘commercially valuable’. There is no need to simply continue to cite a plethora of research with evidence of how and how much women and gender equality could add to overall prosperity while fostering sustainability principles. Women hold an enormous amount of knowledge and skills relevant for making trade contribute to sustainable development and thus women should be actively encouraged to play their role in the trade community. A good starting point for this would be the TradeExperettes’ “Ten Quick Wins for More Equitable Trade”.
To sum up, the year 2021 is remarkable and will keep a special place in the trade history records. This is the year when women finally reached leadership roles at national, regional, and global levels in trade, which had long been held only by men. Furthermore, as shown by the impressive performance of women leaders and policymakers during these past two years of the pandemic, governments should be actively placing more women into jobs and roles in capitals and in diplomatic posts where they are tasked with tackling current and emerging crises. Not only that, but we should also remove obstacles that prevent women from employing their full potential and contributing to more just, responsible, and prosperous societies. And looking to more immediate tasks of post-pandemic recovery, if there is any chance for the disproportionate burden that women have been carrying throughout the pandemic (as in so many other crises) to be shifted and rebalanced, trade policy must become more gender-responsive. The first steps were made in 2021 to accept that work on women equality in trade is part of the core trade agenda. Let’s now move forward with that in mind.
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