Women are harder hit by global crises and research is vital to ensure trade policy makes an effective contribution to a gender-responsive recovery, speakers said on 5 December at the high-level opening session of the World Trade Congress on Gender.
Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, opening the research conference, said the WTO is moving in the right direction and that research will help point the way.
“Crises are not gender neutral. We need to act, and we need to act now,” DG Okonjo-Iweala said to kick off the first international research conference on trade and gender, which is taking place on 5-7 December at the WTO in Geneva, Switzerland.
Thirty researchers from around the world are set to present their latest findings on harnessing gender-responsive trade policies to help economies recover from the polycrisis of the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, high energy and food prices, and climate change, which the Director-General noted has widened the economic and social divide between men and women.
“WTO economists find that tariffs are higher on female labour-intensive goods. Female labour-intensive services sectors face greater trade restrictiveness. Trade costs associated with the need for face-to-face interaction tend to be larger in sectors where women are overrepresented,” DG Okonjo-Iweala said.
Pamela Coke Hamilton, ITC Executive Director, said digitalization and connectivity were other important determinants of women’s economic empowerment and resilience.
“One of the things that were clear during COVID-19 was how impactful going digital was for women businesses.
The importance of having digital access and connectivity for women is going to be even more critical as we move towards more e-commerce, more online marketing, and all the other measures that are now being affected by the digital framework,” she said.