A Gender Analysis of Trade and WTO Rules. A Case Study of Ghana
Myriam Vander Stichele
Notes of a talk at the ICDA Conference on Trade, Environment and Gender, Brussels, 6 November 1998
I. There is no gender analysis of WTO rules or trade policies nor are gender concerns taken into account, notwithstanding:
- the Beijng Summit and Plan of Action in which governments commit themselves to make a gender analysis in all their policies before decisions are taken;
- the gender assessments of structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) which have indicated that macro-economic policies have a different impact on women than on men;
- the preamble of the WTO which claims that trade should achieve raising standards of living, which means that trade rules should particularly benefit women as they constitute 70% of the poor;
- the official claim that poverty contributes to environmental degradation and women are known to constitute the majority of the poor.
However, the need for a gender analysis can be easily seen as in the case of Ghana.
As in many West-African countries, women in Ghana have traditionally been traders and organising the local markets. They have been traders in the formal and the informal sector, at different levels: in the villages, as middlepersons especially between the villages and the cities, and in the cities. "Market queens" have been organising the markets according to commodity groups which included cooperation among each other in difficult times (this contradicts the current competitive model of international trade). Due to the Economic Recovery Programme (SAP), trading operations have become more costly so that only the rich were able to continue and organise trading, at the expense of the market queens, and more women were forced into informal trade.
Although women are the majority of the local traders, Ghanaian women only have a small involvement in international trade. Those women who are trading internationally or regionally seem to mostly import consumer goods, a small part of Ghana's international trade.
II. The lack of gender analysis in the WTO and trade policy is based on
- the macro-economic free trade theory that dominates the WTO and trade policy, as is clear from the declaration of the 1996 WTO Ministerial Conference which envisaged "a world where trade flows freely";
- the strong lobbying by multinationals (TNCs) which argue for free trade rules as they can benefit most from free trade;
- the assumption in the free trade theory that all can
benefit "a level playing field" in which everybody
can trade with each other.
However, a gender analysis can easily indicate that these assumptions are wrong and that the reality is different from the macro-economic free trade theory:
- Women face inequalities and discrimination, e.g. less access to credit and land, which means that women cannot enter the market on equal terms and that they have difficulties in competing with big companies such as TNCs which dominate more than one third of international trading.
- Women are mostly responsible for the economically "invisible" reproductive work such as taking care of the family and the household. Although these activities underpin the economy and the market, and thus trade, they are not remunerated. Moreover, these activities compete with women's trading activities and production for the market, which makes them less competitive and flexible.
- In order to remain competitive in international trade, payment for tasks that are typically those of women are often being cut at government or company level e.g. health care. This means that these tasks are being externalised as they end up as "invisible" work by women.
- A gender analysis makes an analysis not only at the macro-level, but also at the meso level (e.g. institutions, labour market) and micro level (e.g. firms, families) which reveals biases in interactions at all levels and shows other realities than macro-economic aggregate figures.
- Trade theory and trade realities are male biased. Men are the majority of the decision-makers in international trade/WTO and gain most from international trade. International trade has a tendency towards a 24 hour economy, in which there is no time for caring and reproductive tasks. International trade leads to trade "wars" and is based on competition rather than cooperation, strategies "to kill the competitor" and to penetrate markets.
III. The Ghana case study for the Informal Working Group on Gender and Trade was conducted in such a way that it would indicate that there is no gender neutrality.
Given the limited resources and time for the Ghana case study, the research only looked into some sectors in which trade is relevant, such as agriculture, industrial products, traders and mining. This study excludes looking into the link with the environment, the services sector and the WTO rules on
intellectual property rights (TRIPs).
The case study also tried to build upon the framework of analysis on gender and trade. The research was grouped among four basic aspects:
1. Identifying how gender inequalities constrain improvements in women's income, rights and well-being from trade and WTO rules.
Women in Ghana face inequalities and discrimination such as less access to credit, a high burden of household work in addition to a high responsibility for income generation, less esteem and, in some regions, no right to ownership of land. This interacts with trade activities in different sectors as follows.
- In agriculture, women are responsible for food crops - as part of their household tasks- for which they receive no income (subsistence farming) or less income than from export crops. Due to the lesser access to credit and less guarantees to be able to work the land for a long period, women are not able to grow the export crop cocoa for which a producer needs to first grow a cocoa tree for five years before it bears fruit. This means that women have less possibilities to enter the export market.
- In the industrial export sector, discrimination against girls and women result in women being at the lowest level of production and management.
- In the international trade sector, the lack of access to adequate credit for women results in women traders having less possibilities to buy more goods per trip abroad, which makes them less efficient than male traders with large credit. At national level, trade liberalisation under the economic recovery programme of Ghana has resulted in quite some job losses in "uncompetitive industries" which has lead to some men starting a new job in local trading, previously only a women's role, and compete with women on the local market.
- In the mining sector, whose products (mostly gold and diamonds) are almost all exported, women do not trade and are hardly present. The few women who earn a living from mining can be found at the lowest level such diamond sorting and servicing the miners (kitchen, nursing) or the administration (secretaries). Women who do not work in the mines are deprived from their income generation activities as the mines take away the arable land or pollute the land for women's food production.
Conclusion: Women hardly produce export products and when they do, they are at the lowest level of production. Women who are trading internationally mostly import consumer goods and do not export products that men produce. In other words, gendered production and job markets also result in gendered good markets and gendered international trading.
2. Analysing how trade, trade policies and WTO rules contribute to or diminish gender inequalities, gendered markets, female poverty and discrimination.
In agriculture, cheaper imports compete with food production and food processing of women who have no means (e.g. credit or training) to improve their own food production or processing. More over, women food producers face unfair competition from imported food due to WTO rules of the Agricultural Agreement. The WTO imposes a certain amount of food to be imported, to lower tariffs while at the same time not cutting enough export and production subsidies in exporting countries which can therefore bring cheap food products on the Ghanaian markets. This unfair competition seems to have stopped when the increased value of the local currency made imports too expensive.
The WTO's Agricultural Agreement is also discriminatory for women in Ghana as it has not allowed for equal access for food products to Northern markets as for cocoa.
Due to the male domination of decision-making on the use of land and export production, women's production is pushed to marginalised land. For instance, when land has been exhausted from a new kind of export crop, it is left to women for food production. As women have limited means, they lack
agricultural input which might be necessary to deal with the environmental problems.
Export products receive more support and extension services than local food production. As a result, women food producers who are further disadvantaged as they receive less extension services than male export crop producers.
As women's income could be undermined from these interactions, this means than they can less contribute to the family expenses for which they have a high responsibility such as health care and schooling expenses. this might have an indirect negative effect on girl's schooling.
- In the industrial sector, women have problems to improve their situation (higher salaries, promotion, better working conditions) because the trade unions do not include their needs in collective bargaining.
International female traders who are rich are able to benefit from international trade and, according to interviews during the research, earn a good income and escape household burdens. These women also reported that they did not face discrimination during their international trading activities.
Poorer female traders, mostly trading in West-Africa, were still facing discrimination in access to credit, high household burdens etc. and harassment at the border.
Due to trade liberalisation, more competition has made trading activities more difficult and more men step into to the trading business, however only in internationally traded goods which have a higher prestige.
The mining activities undermine women's health inside and outside the mines. Women benefit from the access to health care at the company of their husbands as long as he works.
3. Analysing how reproductive tasks by women interact with trade and trade related activities.
In agriculture, reproductive tasks compete with food production and agricultural income earning activities. Women feel very responsible for family expenses to which they contribute almost all their income, which is not always the case of men. This results in women having less money available to invest in improving income earning activities such as food processing to compete with imported processed
products.
In industrial export production, women workers still face the full household burden as their husbands refuse to share it, resulting in a double work burden for women. Women reportedly spend more of their income to the household than men. Women workers also reported that their job has given them work satisfaction (notwithstanding the bad working conditions) and more self-esteem.
Women traders with family and household responsibilities, and without means to pay for someone to do these tasks, are not able to stay for a long time abroad. This hampers the possibilities of female traders to find the cheapest or the most interesting products to import, which can make them less commercially competitive than male traders without reproductive responsibilities.
In the households of miners, the practice of not pooling husband and wife's incomes continues. This means that women do not have a guaranteed access to the high incomes (related to exports) of their husbands for their household expenses. Once their husband is retired, women are responsible for his health care and the rest of the family, even if the health problems are related to mining.
4. Indicating in far women are involved in trade decision-making and how WTO rules impact on decisions in favour of women.
The Ghana case study was not able to research these aspects in detail, but in interviews women traders complained about the lack of their involvement in governmental decision-making on international trade. The lack of literacy by the poorer women might be a contributing factor. There seem to be very few women involved in trade decision-making although recently there was a female Minister of Trade and a female ambassador to the WTO.
One way how WTO rules impact on decisions in favour of women is that extension services are becoming more supportive of women's food production while at the same time WTO rules enforce some opening of the Ghanaian food market without adequate protection against dumping, which disadvantages food production by women. This disempowers women and WTO disempowers the government to take decision to protect
women's production sectors.
IV. Recommendations based on the Ghana Case Study
A gender analysis of trade and WTO rules in a particular country is best done by a team covering the variety of the necessary expertise (e.g. gender expert, WTO expert, expert on the social and economic situation of a country, ...)
The framework for a gender analysis of trade and the WTO is still being developed. This requires that sufficient means should be made available to further develop as well as conduct a gender and trade analysis.
In order to raise the awareness of the need for a gender analysis of trade and the WTO, different arguments can be used such as:
- The efficiency argument (to be used with care): There is a need to assess whether the right trade regime is in place to benefit all as is being foreseen when the trade measures were taken. This means that the equal benefits of trade/WTO rules to women need to be assessed. In cases where women do not benfit equally, other measures or accompanying policies (e.g. retraining) need to be explored.
- Fighting poverty: A gender analysis could be instrumental in ensuring that trade benefits women who
constitute 70% of the world's poor.
- Achieving women's rights: Governments who are, and in any case should be, committed to women's rights have to make sure that trade measures do not undermine the measures they put in place to empower women citizens.
In the agricultural sector, women in Ghana would be supported by:
- changing the WTO rules so that there is no dumping any more;
- allowing (also in WTO rules) more and better subsidies and support for female farmers;
- considering gender concerns as part of the "non-trade" aspects in the WTO rules (especially
Art. 20 of the Agreement on Trade in Agriculture);
- change WTO rules so as to make protection of female food producers possible when necessary to protect their status of family income earners and to empower them.
The WTO's Trade Policy Review Mechanism (TPRM) should incorporate a gender analysis of the WTO rules. The TPRM is due to be reviewed by the year 2000 and should change its terms of reference so that it assesses how far WTO rules achieve raising standards of living and the other aspects mentioned in the WTO's preamble. This should include a gender analysis.
The trade policy review reports per country produced by the WTO's TPRM, should contain gendered disaggregated data for jobs, good markets and services.
In order to fully incorporate gender concerns in trade, the current macro-economic free trade basis should be changed. If this does not happen, practical steps to improve the current situation are possible such as:
- using disaggregated data as the basis for new WTO negotiations;
- make the trade and WTO decision-making nationally and multilaterally more democratic and guarantee women's input;
- hold discussions on gender analysis in the different WTO committees;
- avoid that a gender analysis in the TPRM and other WTO decision-making structures become san additional
conditionality for developing countries;
- explore and implement additional measures to accompany and reduce the harmful effects of trade and WTO
rules;
- use a gender checklist or gender indicator (see Ghana case study) during the different decision-making stages on trade and the WTO.
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