gender 2013 short

Gender-trade and development policies How is gender integrated into EU’s trade and development policies?

Gender: a controversial concept  Debate ”Nature vs educationsocialization”  From social biology (sex as part of nature) to: gender as a product of socialization  Gender as a socially/contextualized interpretation of biological sex, as a social construction of sex

Globalization and SAP  Two faces of economic restructuring  The export model-to find new nichesto be exported at any cost  Foreign trade and foreign investmentthe new key words in the globalization era

SAP-measures and women  SAP and women-taking from the statesocial care responsibilities-putting them on women  Reduction of fiscal deficits, promotion of export oriented industrial and agriculture production and attraction of direct investment-less jobs and less income  Opening of the economies-no more industry protection or subsidies  Privatization-selling state assets and infrastructure (like energy production communication, etc)

SAP: consequences  Poor and small farmers neglectedfood sovereignty –forgotten  Small and middle national enterprises-sacrificed to international competitiveness (ISI-gains erased)  Middle classes-impoverished and poor groups-specially women-very affected  Reactions: fundamentalism-religious and cultural: anti-westernization

The ”maquiladora model” and women  The global chain production: at the search of cheap, docile and unorganized labour  Women the majority of the workers in low-skilled, labor-intensive sectors, concentrated in the lower segments of the occupational hierarchies,  Particularly vulnerable to individual and structural discrimination and abuse

Women (or feminisation of cheap labour) as a motor into globalization

 Women-are forced to go into the labour market to make ends meet: women and feminisation of export jobs as the reserve army of labour for export competitivenessunderpaid workers in all low wage export industries (industrial and agro-export) in the global South

Globalization and women  Moreover: women workers in the informal sector-used and abused by the global chain production: as easy prey to sub-contractors  Flexibilization-a way to make production more efficient- putting more and more formal work into the informal market  Service sector-more and more informal

Applying a gender perspective to trade policies  Applying a gender perspective to trade policies means overcoming the divide between social and economic policies, giving access to affordable essential services and social security, and enforcing women’s and poor people’s right to food, health, education and livelihoods

Some consequences of trade  Export model in outsourcing products and services-women as workers  Privatisation: resources and services  More women in the informal sector  women as migrants: 50-95% of all migrants in the world: import of maids, traffiking-prostitution, bridepost orders, sexual tourism.

Trade liberalisation in agriculture  Livelihoods and food security:  favours the development of large-scale commercial, input-intensive, exportoriented farming  undermine small-scale farming for subsistence or local markets, which has been based on biodiversity, indigenous knowledge systems and exchange of local seeds, mostly done by women

Trade liberalization in agriculture-2  It encourages consolidation of land holdings, monocultures and the introduction of machinery, while women still struggle to gain land rights and access to credit, technology and information.  leads to the depletion of common land and state forests, which were used by women for collection of fuel, fodder, water, oil seeds and fruit, as well as roots and herbs for nutritional and medical purposes.

Also: women as agriculture workers  Women work as unpaid family labour on their husband’s cash crop fields, as hired labourers on large-scale commercial farms and plantations or  recently as small scale contract farmers who produce non-traditional agricultural exports comprising vegetables, fruits and flowers for foreign buyers

Agro-exports-also feminised  In many countries horticulture for export and agro-industries have become new feminised sectors of the economy because of their labour intensity

Gendered consequences  Opening markets and trade liberalisation have redistributive effects and change national economies as gendered processes of production, reproduction and consumption

Is this form of female labour a liberation or another sort of oppression?

 Liberal views: labour gives women independence-takes them out of the patriarchal family-empowers them  Critical/leftist views: enterprise owners replace the husband-female workers controlled, exploited, double or triple burden

From WID to GAD  Recognizing the women’s contribution to the economy and to developmentfrom a liberal perspective (WID1970s) to an empowering perspective (GAD)  From above: WB-gender action plan Gender Equality as Smart Economics (2006) to EU’s discourses on gender equality in development cooperation

Gender: successfully mainstreamed into development policy?

 International organizations: all have adopted gender sensitive guidelines: for ex.EU, WB, FMI, OECD, MDGs  Fragile gains, sometimes without support for implementation-WB evaluation of the gender dimension in WB policies-disappointing -Poverty reduction Strategy papers-very little discussion of gender issues.

Women’s rights organiz. in Paris declaration on Aid 2005  Women’s rights organizations not part of the 2nd High Level Forum and initially had not taken into consideration the potential impacts of this new Declaration. The Declaration was very technical and only focused on aid delivery and management mechanisms, but in practice the Aid Effectiveness agenda became a predominant framework that is guiding most donors’ efforts to improve aid quality.

From the women’s rights perspective  the Millennium Declaration and the Paris Declaration are regressive frameworks for guiding development aid, compared to the achievements of the UN conferences of the nineties, the Monterrey Consensus and the overall internationally agreed development goals (IADG)3 and above all, a setback with respect to the existing instruments of Human Rights.

Trade and development?  Trade liberalisation and export growth are equated with development benefits  But: no evidence that they are actually pro-poor and that the neoclassical assumption of the ‘trickle-down effect’ of wealth will work out.

EU-from development aid to trade  The EU is in the process of reducing its aid for human development and its anti-poverty programmes  For ex: India perceived not as a developing but as a threshold country  shifting assistance to economic cooperation and aid for trade

Gender diferential  based on the gender division of labour – in the market as well as in the household –  On women’s and men’s different access to and control over resources such as assets, rights and time, and on cultural ascriptions of gender stereotypes and norms

UNCTAD-trade and gender  UNCTAD carried out a gender analysis of the different WTO agreements  Conclusions: gender differences continue to exist, women are more often affected by negative impacts of trade liberalisation than men  But: free trade provides new market and job opportunities for women

Final reflections-why gender?  A way to see the social consequences of liberalization and the new neoliberal models concretized by free trade  FTAS: a violent way of modernization where social structures of inequality become even more unequal

Women’s lobby on EU’s development policies?  WIDE: a dismantled organization  But:nowdays: WIDEplus: http://wideplusnetwork.wordpress.co m/2012/09/21/find-out-more-aboutwide-plus/