Is Trade Liberalization a Window of Opportunity for Women?

WTO Staff Working Paper No.ERSD-2003-03

38 Pages Posted: 22 Aug 2006

Date Written: August 2003

Abstract

This paper analyses how trade affects women's job opportunities and earnings through five case studies: Mauritius, Mexico, Peru, the Philippines and Sri Lanka. It is found that women's share of the labour force has increased over time and the wage gap between men and women has narrowed. It is also found that there is a positive and statistically significant relation between exports and women's share of employment while there is a statistically significant and negative correlation between women's share in employment and imports. The correlation between women's share of employment and trade stems from variation between sectors rather than within sectors over time, indicating that export-competing industries tend to employ women while import-competing industries tend to employ men. Trade liberalization is likely to create jobs for women and over time increase their relative wages.

Keywords: Gender, trade liberalization

JEL Classification: F14, F16

Suggested Citation

Nordås, Hildegunn Kyvik, Is Trade Liberalization a Window of Opportunity for Women? (August 2003). WTO Staff Working Paper No.ERSD-2003-03 , Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=925793 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.925793

Hildegunn Kyvik Nordås (Contact Author)

Örebro University ( email )

SE-70182 Orebro
SWEDEN

NUPI ( email )

P. O. Box 8159 Dep.
Oslo, 0033
Norway

CEP ( email )

Zurich
Switzerland

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
180
Abstract Views
1,054
Rank
301,996
PlumX Metrics