2021 - The Year Trade Turned to Women
Kellie: Good morning, and thank you for joining us Mia. We really appreciate your time today. And thanks for joining us on the Trade Experettes podcast. We are so happy to have you. And if I could ask you to start off with an introduction of yourself and your history in trade and what your experience has been so far in the field.
Mia: Well, thank you very much. First of all, for inviting me, I am a long-term fan of Trade Experettes and was really honored to be included into the community after checking what has been going on and how they are contributing, and I really am proud to be part of the community. My trade career started a long time ago in the last century after I finished my bachelor's and then master's and the doctorate, all in the trade area. And I started in academia. I was assistant professor in Croatia working at university, but then I moved to New Zealand and started a lecture position in international trade at Auckland university. And after that I was given a great opportunity to write the textbook on international trade for Macmillan which really sort of cemented me into the area of teaching and researching in trade.
After that, I discovered that I can do probably a little bit more in terms of policy by joining the United Nations regional commission for Asia Pacific and working with governments more directly. In looking at the rationale of why to change trade policy in a certain way. So that allowed me a fantastic experience in working with Policymakers and also other stakeholders because lucky for me, I was working with the research community called Asia Pacific research and training network on trade for the whole duration of my UN career, so I never lost touch with the research and training in trade. After the mandatory retirement for the UN I remained active in trade, and being part of the Trade Experettes gives me one more outlet to really continue you know, being up-to-date with what is happening in the research area of trade, but also more importantly of what is happening in terms of policy-making.
When I was educated in trade it was more of a mainstream neoclassical technical education. And so the standard was that trade is gender neutral and my discovery then later through the research led me to change that and look at trade as having very differential impact, particular trade policy. So that's how I came to research and in this particular area of trade.
Kellie: And we are very appreciative that you're here sharing your knowledge with us at Trade Experettes today. So thank you. And you also were able to share with us your thoughts in a blog recently published on the Trade Experettes website the title was 2021 the year trade turned to women. So my question would be what inspired you to write this blog post?
Mia: Well for the trade community 2021 was really a year to deliver on trade because we expected finally that the 12th ministerial conference of the World Trade Organization would happen in 2021. So we've been expecting some advances on the discussions and in negotiations like fisheries and agriculture, in domestic regulation in services, etcetera.
Secondly it was the second year of the pandemic and the topic of trade and health came into the focus, and there were certain discussions looking at how trade is the solution for certain crises, like the pandemic, rather than the problem. So there were lots of expectations for 2021 and then the ministerial conference got actually postponed indefinitely. And that was a big let down. I wonder if we can find something positive that happened in trade. And then of course, that was the year where there was a mega shift in the leadership of the global institutions actually holding into the hands of women.
We had a frontrunner in terms of the International Trade Center, Pamela was appointed, but then the other two that really work in terms of negotiation and disputes and then linkage to development were never, in their history, never in the leadership of women. And so then we have Ngozi and temporarily Isabel was acting director of UNCTAD, but then of course Rebecca came. All these women had tremendous experience in inter-governmental and governmental dealings, and of course we had to celebrate that. So I said, I have to write about that, because it was a momentous event in history. But then when I started writing it, I realized there are so many other things that did not happen for a woman. And, so therefore the blog.
And then it got me started also because from the corporate sector what happens is that when the corporations are in trouble, what happens is something about this called a glass cliff. They appointed a woman because no man wants to take the role as the CEO of the corporation that is in trouble because of the risk of failure. And so then the woman is appointed. When you look at what's happening with the pandemic and how globalization and trade was featured through many disruptions in the pandemic years, these organizations were in similar situations and, and yes, women were appointed. But I do still think that this is not the glass cliff. I think it's breaking the glass ceiling and I hope it will stay like that.
Kellie: So I guess then, cause what you were saying about all of the appointments or the now we have these women leaders in these international organizations, but in your blog you kind of say, this is not enough while this is great and we can celebrate this, but can you tell us a little bit more about your thoughts on what the international community can do to further promote gender equality in international trade?
Mia: Yeah, this is something that I continued talking about, then sometimes I get on people's nerves because I always point to the facts and to the numbers. And so we have women now at the top of three international organizations, and there were absolutely great positive changes within, for example, within the WTO, I was looking at the numbers, and so the woman also came through the ranks of the divisional directors, I think the number in my blog was six out of 17 divisional directors are women. Recently there were more changes in personnel at that level in the WTO. So hopefully there will be further women appointed. And then also after I wrote the blog, there were new chair persons announced in the WTO that come from the delegations who actually lead the work of WTO through the committees and the bodies that report to the general council and the council on trade negotiations. And there, we had a great shift. So previously there were about 30% women represented in those roles. And now it is over 50%. It's 51% in my last count. So this is all great. And obviously we are expecting similar changes in UNCTAD and etcetera.
But then, when you look at the broader pool of women, a number of ministers trade ministers that are women. At my last count, there were three in Asia and, of course, you have one in the United States and in a few European countries or the European Union and UK, but then it ends there, because it's still much lower than what gender parity would be 50, 50%. And the similar is in the corporate sector. There are only about 30% of women that lead the major corporations.
So what is in these numbers? It's an important signal. You know, if the numbers go up with women in leadership we send the wrong signals. If they go up, we have a signal to both women and men that change is possible. And if it's not going upward, fast enough then obviously we have to read it as they are not doing enough. And the World Bank has issued a report recently about business and law and women. There are 2.4 billion women in the world that legally do not have equal standing as men. This is a huge number. This is almost like India and China together. You know, this is a fantastically large number. So how can you expect to have gender equality if by law and by behavior we do not adhere to equality. So that's why I'm saying we need to have more actions by allowing further women economic empowerment , and then when you look at the economic area, trade has been in my mind one of the greatest drivers of prosperity and growth, and if we don't put women more into trade, then we will not have that economic empowerment, we will not have gender equality. So this is how these things are linked. The question is how do you put women into trade?
So, in the activities of trade, when you look at the sectors who work in export-import firms or trade logistics, often it is reserved for men because culturally, in some countries, women cannot work in shifts or it is difficult to work in such an environment or the skills are not there. So then women are somehow diverted to seek other employment instead of changing the conditions for women and men to equally be able to exit those jobs. Then you look at the pay gap, I was appalled by the recent research in New Zealand. And I think Stephanie Honey wrote about that in her blog in Trade Experettes. The research was posted by the ministry just recently they have done a fantastic research by looking at the firms exporting goods, and representation of women and the conditions that of work of women in those firms, and what they have found out is that the underrepresented that they are paid less, that even though the exporting firms, as we know from the literature for a longer period of time now, exporting firms pay more than the domestic or non trading firms. But the premium that is given to men in these firms is higher than the one for women. So, our dictum that trade will solve all the problems because it's paying more, it's a better conduit of productivity, it's more efficiency and all of that is fine, but we still discover that even in these firms in New Zealand, that is one of the frontier country in terms of gender equality, we still lack, right. So what do we do? We need to be more assertive in putting gender mainstreaming out there. But for that, we need to understand why is this happening? Why are women underrepresented? What is preventing them? Because I'm sure this is not their intellectual or physical ability, but there must be some other social, cultural, educational, and financial reasons to prevent them from going out there and working in those activities.
Kellie: I love the fact that you pointed out that we need to figure out the problem or the source of the issue because then, only then I'm assuming what you mean is that then we would be able to come up with policies to address the issue. Right. So what advice would you have moving forward to kind of help fix the situation or help at least influence the situation, allowing trade to be a little bit more representative.
Mia: Well, you know, a woman cannot come to the level of leadership if they're not present in the broader pool of these experiences and skills. When you look at the area for example of health or physics, or etcetera, you would not assume that someone who is not skilled in that area or who is not working in that area to be making decision on that, yet when it comes to gender or woman issues, we still have men making decisions.
And in terms of quality of these policy solutions then, I would suggest, please go out there, understand what is the problem? Then do really like a positive discrimination policy, I know that sounds very radical, but I think it's rational in this context and appoint women for that reason to lead all the changes that need to be there particularly when it comes to looking at the discriminatory impact of tariff schedules, for example, that may have differential impact in women and men in their role of consumers, we know about pink tariffs, but just recently, also there was anecdotal evidence from United States that basically, when you look at the tariffs in apparel sector, you will find that tariffs on cashmere are much less, and then on wool a little bit higher, but the highest is polyester, who is buying polyester clothing? It's the poor women, not the rich women. So you have within the woman category this differential impacts, and further research into that would give you insights on how you need to change the trade policy. It starts with, of course, the trade instruments that you apply, but then you look further and see what are the other trade instruments that you can use to make this impact less adverse on women and then invest in education, this starts with education; provide women with more skills in terms of not only understanding technical side of the problem in trade, but also being able to engage in advocacy, being able to engage in public speaking, being able to be engaged in politics so that they can take up that role.
And don't be afraid to find innovative solutions. New Zealand has gone out there and said, we want to have a gender agreement on global trade and gender. Right. And so we have to start with some sort of new ideas in this area, you know, we have so many trade agreements and we celebrate them because they mention gender equality, they mention women's empowerment, then some of them even mention women, but they don't go far enough. They're not binding, they're not enforceable. And when you look at the choice of language, very few will say shall, they will have, you know, the countries will seek to do this or that. And unless you change that language there will be no change in policy because the policy to be actually making impacts need to be enforceable, so that the trade agreements can actually lead the overall changes in trade policy.
I think we need to talk more directly with trade negotiators and understand what seemed to be the problems of finding more direct references in the provisions related to this, because if we understand it better then we can probably work out what can be done. So I think working directly with trade negotiators would be helpful. And I hope one of the events this year in Trade Experettes can turn to that and invite trade negotiators and say, how do you suggest we can go about it and promote the language that would be more going towards women's empowerment through trade agreements. And then also I think invite speakers that would talk about positive experiences, so that they remove any possible remaining uncertainties or doubts about women being able to deliver.
Then the question is really why don't we have one single agreement on trade and women? We do have this global trade and gender arrangement that as I said, New Zealand is promoting together with Canada and Chile and now there's Mexico in there as well. But I think for WTO type of agreements, it would be much better if they would incorporate this language on women's equality or gender equality in the other agreements rather than to have one self-standing agreement, because we really need mainstreaming in other areas, in sectors, like fisheries and agriculture, services, in terms of digital trade and e-commerce, etcetera.
Kellie: in your blog, you mentioned about, you know, how can we maintain this momentum? Like all of these great things that you're saying about, you know, women being appointed and the leadership roles. And then you were saying that some of the the ratios between men and women have been more equalized in some situations, what can we do to kind of keep this momentum going? As you said, we should maintain the momentum, but are there ways that we can do that? How can we do that?
Mia: Well, since my blog, we had this terrible thing happening with the war in Ukraine, and really the risk of derailment of the multilateral trade system. But in my blog I say that the changes that were happening within the WTO system in terms of Secretariat itself, but also in terms of the members, looking at gender in a different way, not anymore saying the old adage, that trade is gender neutral, which means gender blind, but actually putting the words, being gender responsive and even responsible that is a great advantage. And so of course we have this Buenos Aires Declaration from 2017 that has formally put women and trade into the radar of all the members. I am still annoyed that not all of the members have signed that. Some of the very large ones, India still is on the fence. I think South Africa as well. But I think that that declaration is a very good start. And it's sitting on four pillars that includes some of these things that I was saying about more research and sharing experiences between the countries and learning from each other. But also looking at how to infuse this, what we find from the research into the text of the agreements.
And so 21 is a historical year, for the first time in the history of WTO, we have mentioned non-discrimination of women and men in the legal text of the agreement, which is the domestic regulation on services. It is the very last provision in the agreement, it is footnoted, meaning that it is pending to this or that, but it is nevertheless the clause in the agreement, which says that woman and men shall not be discriminated, or woman shall not be discriminated in vis-a-vis positions in working on services. This is a fine achievement. But why is there no mention of women nondiscrimination in fisheries agreement, in e-commerce texts that is being negotiated, in agriculture, in trade and health, that is being negotiated in terms of the statement of declaration, there is no mention of gender equality. So, this is where we are failing, and this is where we have to keep reminding that gender equality will not be actually achieved if we do not put language about opening the area of work in trade for women through these agreements. And it's possible because we do find that language in some of the preferential trade agreements. So, with the WTO now, possibly going into the area of negotiating sectorially through the joint statement initiatives and with the sort of more like-minded countries, then it will be more likely to actually agree on insertion of such language in such provisions, which I think it's a great promise for future in terms of strengthening the woman's role in trade. And I'm not afraid to talk about the role of women and the feminization of trade and trade policy because I don't want to hide it under, under some other language.
Kellie: And I love the way you put it in the blog too. You say remove the gender neutral blindfolds.
Mia: Exactly. So, we have to actually like an epidemic, right? We learn to trust science, here you have to trust numbers and you have to look at if we do more of the impact assessment of various trade policies that we have done and how they impact women. And we do have a number that estimates, that gives us a good enough reason to see that women are not affected in the same way as men, and that they are actually discriminated against in terms of the effect of trade policy, then we have to trust that number and we have to go back and correct it and change the policy. In that context, I think we have to rely on more of the impact analysis to understand what is the problem.
Kellie: You mentioned the domestic regulation and services, and you mentioned in the very last entry, there is a provision that would exclude measures that discriminate between men and women, but then you mentioned a footnote and you're saying that that footnote softens the provision. Can you tell me just a little bit more about the footnote? I'd like to know why it would soften that statement. The text of the footnote says differential treatment that is reasonable and objective and aims to achieve a legitimate purpose and adoption by members of temporarily special measures aimed at accelerating de facto equality between men and women shall not be considered discrimination for purposes of this provision. So I guess they just kind of put some exceptions in there. That's what it sounds like.
Mia: The provision is clear enough, right? The provision says you will not discriminate, but then in the footnote it goes into trying to explain what does not constitute discrimination. It allows for some discriminatory behavior to actually seep in. And one has to bear in mind that in many of the GATT and other texts actually the footnotes are the one that changed the meaning of the provision, and in many cases allow for non implementation or non-enforcement, so the footnotes do matter and this one in my mind should not have been there. But probably some of the members that negotiated the texts were not comfortable with the language.
For example, the new declaration that is put forward for the ministerial conference 12, stating all of the reasons why economic empowerment of women is necessary, has invited the separate Russian statements saying, okay we are going to sign it, but we understand that women's economic empowerment is strictly in the confines of sustainable development, goal five that talks about gender economic empowerment. So this is where members are still trying to sort of limit the upward space of how far gender equality will go.
Kellie: A couple things came to mind while you were talking. One was you had said something about having more women in the pool so that there can be more qualified women in leadership roles in the future. And I love that you said that because that's exactly what Trade Experettes is trying to do is to advocate for the trade field, advocate for those female experts that know trade and can provide these innovative solutions that you're talking about, if you know, given the platform or given the space to expand on their ideas. And so I love that you said that that's exactly what we're trying to do here.
Mia: I agree with you that's exactly the function of Trade Experettes, but also what I like is that it allows me to be assertive and every time that I actually can put forward the existence of a body that can help in seeking solutions, whether it is speaking or technical advice or educational or training purposes for other women. We need to make a critical mass to have an impact, right? And I think Trade Experettes bringing together all this wealth of knowledge, that woman in so many professions related to trade and trade policy-making you know legal, economic, sociology, anthropology, and everything that through which we study trade policy impact and trade policy design and etcetera, now they can work together or learn through this cooperation, interdisciplinary, but also cultural experiences, and learning from each other. I think it's the platform that allows that learning and putting it to work, putting it really out there [00:28:00] and demonstrating that the knowledge is there and that it can actually make a difference. And I think that has been noticed even in the WTO, through the panels that the Trade Experettes were putting there and working with the members. And it's not anymore a term that is difficult to pronounce or to remember because the Trade Experettes is now something that is on the tip of the language and being pronounceable by many of the members in the trade profession, men or women. And I'm very proud of that achievement, I think that the work has been fantastic.
And for me personally, you know, as I said, I have been involved with ARTNeT for many years, and then in last three years of my coordinating role of that network, I came to realize that we have neglected to really pay direct attention to women in ARTNeT. And so I started taking all my messages as a woman in ARTNeT just trying to emphasize that more attention needs to be given to training of women, to using women as advisors, to disseminating women's research and putting them into themes of work. So, I really found Trade Experettes as one very helpful channel through which I can also promote this gender equality notion in ARTNeT community as well.
And I think these are all the reasons for me to be there. And I continue to, you know, every trade confidential or meet and greet, and all of these meetings are just fantastic opportunities. It is something that I look for to do, each next activity and event is just a new uplifting, and I have a daughter, she's not an economist, but I wish in her area of work and in her profession, that would be a similar sort of community to help because I find it very useful.
Kellie: Thank you for that. That's amazing such kind words. I appreciate all of that insight, Mia, thank you so much for joining us today on the Trade Experettes podcast and we hope to be able to learn more from you in the coming months and years with Trade Experettes. We definitely appreciate your willingness to support the next generation and that's what Trade Experettes is trying to do as well. So, thank you for joining us in that mission, and we appreciate your input.
Mia: Thank you very much for inviting me.