International Economic Law, Gender Equality, and Paternity Leave: Can the WTO Be Utilized to Balance the Division of Care Labor Worldwide?

Abstract

Which public policies most effectively promote gender equality and how can they be realized internationally to support women on a global scale? I first argue that longer periods of paid paternity leave must be embraced to challenge the historical conception of women as the primary caregiver in a male-female partnership and to bring men into the private sphere at the important confluence of a couple’s childfree and parental lives. In order to broadly achieve these policies, I turn to international law. Building off Charlesworth, Chinkin, and Wright’s observation of the international legal order’s gendered nature, I demonstrate that the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) core labor standards, as they are today, reflect a gendered understanding of the labor market and are insufficient to support the basic needs of a working population that includes both men and women. I further argue that a reimagined set of these standards should be incorporated into a World Trade Organization (WTO) Trade-Related Agreement on Labor Standards that would impose substantive obligations on Member States. Such an agreement would be consistent with the WTO’s historical embrace of “embedded liberalism” and could ultimately drive domestic policy transformations benefiting women worldwide.

Keywords: Gender Equality, World Trade Organization, International Labor Organization, Feminist Legal Theory, Paternity Leave, Parental Leave, Maternity Leave