Container Ships, San Francisco bay. Wikimedia Commons.
Don’t be fooled by the news of a trade and gender declaration at next week’s World Trade Organisation (WTO) meeting in Buenos Aires, or by stories of Canada’s new ‘feminist’ approach to trade. Gendered exploitation is at the heart of the free trade agenda - a few tweaks to the edges won’t make it feminist. In fact, it won’t do anything much at all. If we really want an international trade system that works for women, tokenism won’t cut it. We need to overhaul our approach to trade.
Trade policy has traditionally been presented as gender neutral, with women described as beneficiaries of an international trade system which, as this story goes, increases their employment opportunities and expands their financial independence. But after two decades of free trade fundamentalism, inequality is on the rise and the world’s richest 8 men now have as much wealth as the poorest 50% of the population. In 2017, women still make up majority of the world’s poor.
