On this Women's Day, we review how efforts to empower Latin American women through foreign trade can economically impact the nations of the region, helping to close gender gaps and inequalities.
The inclusion of gender equality clauses in free trade agreements has emerged as a recent, although still incipient, phenomenon at the international level.
Specifically since 1994, environmental and labor issues have been incorporated into trade agreements, gender chapters are gaining ground as a bet that an inclusive trade policy can accelerate the closing of gaps.
Latin America is not immune to this trend, with Chile being the country that leads the way, having included a chapter of this nature for the first time globally in the Free Trade Agreement with Uruguay signed in 2018.
Recently, at the end of February of this year, the European Parliament approved the modernization of the trade agreement between the European Union and Chile that included a chapter dedicated to the gender perspective. This update marked a milestone as it is the first time that the text of a trade agreement negotiated by the EU with a third party includes a chapter dedicated to trade and the gender perspective, which includes the commitment of both parties to eliminate discrimination against women. women.
The signing of the terms of reference (ToR) for the modernization of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between Chile and Mexico, also carried out last February, followed the same trend as the one negotiated with the EU by including a chapter on Trade and Gender.
Thus, with these modernizations, 18% of Chile's trade agreements will include gender chapters.
This trend evidences a growing global awareness of the importance of addressing gender equality in the context of international trade.
“There is a growing sensitivity towards the need to address gender equality,” says Beata Wojna, professor at the School of Social Sciences at Tecnológico de Monterrey to AméricaEconomía. “Not only in political, educational, and health aspects, but also in the economic sphere. International trade, being an engine of economic growth, is presented as a key platform to promote the inclusion of women in the economy."
The idea of specifically addressing women and the challenges of gender equality, as well as inclusion, has their basis in various studies and working documents from international organizations.
The World Trade Organization (WTO), for example, maintains that trade reproduces the differentiated roles between women and men in the economic activity of each society.
This inequality has slowed economic growth, the reduction of poverty and the elimination of discrimination between both sexes, explains a document on 'Gender approach in trade agreements', prepared by researchers Alicia Frohmann and Ximena Olmos for Cepal and the Pacific alliance .
In their document, dated August 2023, Frohman and Olmos indicate that many global trade rules benefit men more than women and reinforce gender inequality. And they point out that the COVID-19 crisis reinforced the need for public policies and inclusive trade rules that benefit women.
Hence, an inclusive trade policy could accelerate the closing of gaps.
But, in addition, the incorporation of specific measures in FTAs reflects a commitment by the signatory countries to carry out concrete actions in this regard.
In terms of positive outcomes, Wojna continues, the gender chapters seek to reaffirm the need for gender equality, supporting the existing international legislative framework. In addition, they focus on the statistical inclusion of women in international trade, committing to monitoring the consequences of trade on gender equality. This promotes the exchange of good practices and joint activities, such as training women to participate in business activities linked to international trade.
However, the implementation of these chapters faces challenges.
“Not all countries show the same sensitivity towards the gender issue, and the current trend towards protectionism in international trade makes it difficult to negotiate and sign new treaties,” explains Beata Wojna. “Among them are African and Middle Eastern countries.”
PIONEER REGION
In recent years, gender chapters in agreements have contributed to positioning gender equality on the global trade agenda.
A growing number of countries have adopted separate chapters on trade and gender in trade agreements, all with an emphasis on promoting women's rights and cooperation.
Latin America has been a pioneering region, where “rather than pointing to specific non-discriminatory and inclusive business disciplines, the focus of the chapters is on economic empowerment and the advancement of women's rights,” says the study by Frohman and Elms.
In this context, the report highlights Chile as the country that began almost a decade ago with these sections. And currently, one of the pillars of Chilean trade policy is inclusivity, as reflected by the Feminist Foreign Policy (PEF) of the Gabriel Boric government, launched in 2023, which seeks to eliminate barriers to the full incorporation of women in the economy.
“There is nothing strange about the basis of a Feminist Foreign Policy: it is the conviction to achieve a more egalitarian world (...) It is a paradigm under construction, which will necessarily be updated, deepened and strengthened along with the advances of the same society and the challenges of the future,” said Chilean Foreign Minister Alberto van Klaveren last June during the launch of the PEF.
In this way, Chile became the first South American country to implement a Feminist Foreign Policy, joining others that already have one, such as France, Canada, Germany, Spain, Luxembourg, Mexico, among others.
"We are promoting the incorporation of the gender perspective in economic-trade agreements and in multilateral forums and organizations, also giving continuity to the work that has been carried out on this issue in recent years and in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals," says Claudia Sanhueza, Undersecretary of International Economic Relations (SUBREI) of the Chilean Foreign Ministry.
According to the entity's website, Chile has world leadership in gender and trade. The country currently has gender and trade chapters in current bilateral agreements with Uruguay, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay. A chapter on these matters is also included in its updated treaty with Singapore as an Associate State of the Pacific Alliance.
Additionally, it is negotiating the incorporation of gender and trade chapters with South Korea.
This seeks not only to recognize the importance of incorporating a gender perspective in trade policy, “with the objective of ensuring that the benefits of economic growth are shared fairly, but also to cooperate between countries so that more women join in trade and benefits are a reality for businessmen and women in our countries,” adds Sanhueza.
The approach is not just bilateral. At the multilateral level, Chile participated in the creation (along with Canada and New Zealand) of the Inclusive Trade Action Group (ITAG). A key initiative of the group was the Global Trade and Gender Agreement (GTAGA), which seeks to promote an inclusive approach to trade and eliminate gender barriers and encourage the empowerment of women within international trade, through the exchange of good practices and of cooperation activities.
With this, the country has promoted the adhesion of other countries to both bodies: Australia, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Mexico have joined ITAG; while Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Peru joined the GTAGA - in addition to the aforementioned countries.
“And at the recent WTO Ministerial Conference in Dubai, Chile promoted the inclusion of a paragraph on the economic empowerment of women, which was accepted by the 164 member economies, highlighting our country's leadership in this matter,” adds Undersecretary Sanhueza.
Specifically, these gender chapters include a diversity of provisions ranging from the mutual recognition of commitments regarding gender equality, the development of cooperation activities, commitments to the participation of public institutions. Collaborative meetings are also held that involve efforts on capacity development, financial inclusion, female leadership, development of women's networks, promotion of female entrepreneurship.
SUBREI highlights, finally, the importance of collecting statistical data with a gender perspective, to have accurate diagnoses on the reality of women's participation in productivity and exports.
“A concrete example is the visibility of the figures we have regarding women's participation in international trade. The discussion of gender issues, through the chapters that we negotiate and implement, has allowed us to improve the methodology to measure this data and monitor the impacts that are generated,” emphasizes the undersecretary.
Proof of this is that until 2022, when the fifth x-ray of Women Exporters was published, the value of shipments made by companies led by women was 3% of Chile's non-copper exports, which was equivalent to about US $1.2 billion. Today, with the adjustments made to the methodology, this value increased to 37.5% of the value exported by the country, exceeding US$ 16,000 million.
MEXICO, THE OTHER PEF NATION
Since 2020, Mexico has had a feminist foreign policy. In this way, the North American country was one of the first in the world to adopt this type of commitment. Meanwhile, in the Latin American region he was the first to do so.
“Unlike other feminist foreign policies, Mexican policy has two main aspects: one, focused on the exterior of Mexico, with a transversal feminist perspective, and another, towards the interior of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE) to increase the number of women and make their work visible,” said Mariana Herrera-Salcedo, member of the Mexican Council of International Affairs (Comexi) to the specialized media Foreign Affairs Latin America .
Herrera-Salcedo adds: “Officially, Mexico defines its feminist foreign policy as a State policy, whose actions seek to eliminate gender gaps and inequalities, with the aim of building a more just, prosperous and egalitarian society.”
Having a feminist foreign policy is key, taking into account that in 2023 Mexico became the country that exports the most to the United States, surpassing China for the first time in two decades.
However, female participation in Mexican foreign trade is low.
According to an analysis by the Institute for the Integration of Latin America and the Caribbean (INTAL) of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), in Mexico 1 in 3 jobs associated with exports is occupied by a woman. “The services sector is the one with the highest rate of female employment. “Women have high educational levels and occupy a good proportion of sectors linked to knowledge, such as professional services,” says the study.
INTAL predicts that by 2026, one in every three dollars would come from sales associated with services, a sector with the highest female employment.
“However, women will continue to have a lower participation (29%) than men (71%) in the added value corresponding to the work generated by the economic recovery. Commerce, manufacturing and professional services are the sectors that would stand out in the new added value linked to female employment,” the institute notes.
Although the rest of the Latin American countries do not have a policy of this type, they do include this approach in the negotiation of trade agreements. This is the case of Ecuador, which last month announced that the gender approach will be included in the negotiations it will soon hold with Canada, with a view to establishing a bilateral trade agreement.
The person in charge of making this announcement was the Minister of Production, Foreign Trade, Investment and Fisheries of Ecuador, Sonsoles García, who showed a study on gender and trade in which female participation was analyzed in more than 4,500 Ecuadorian companies, especially in regarding women's participation, salary gaps and their representation at the hierarchical levels of that conglomerate.
This report - as he said - has made it possible to highlight the importance and need to undertake actions that balance opportunities in the labor market and allow the progress and professional development of women.
Additionally, although Ecuador's negotiations to conclude an FTA with Mexico, with a view to joining the Pacific Alliance, have been stalled for more than a year, they also include gender chapters.
Meanwhile, Colombia and Peru have so far only joined the Global Agreement on Trade and Gender (GTAGA). Brazil, for its part, did the same last week by entering into this agreement.
In this way, the inclusion of gender chapters in future trade agreements concluded by Latin American countries does not guarantee the closing of gender gaps and inequalities.
The WTO, in its study “Women and trade: the role of trade in promoting gender equality” summarizes it this way: “Gender-sensitive trade policies are essential for promoting women's economic empowerment.” , which should include financial and non-financial incentives, public procurement and capacity building.”
