The Voice of Experience:

The Voice of Experience:
What Women Know about the Impact of the New Trade Agenda
Angela Hale

The rhetoric of the WTO is that the new trade agenda is a process of trade liberalisation from which everyone will ultimately benefit. As RR said at the WTO Ministerial Conference in May 1998, "What we celebrate today is a system of consensus based on rules that could embrace all the world's economies. One that is weaving together a web of economic interdependence that gives us shared interest in our mutual prosperity". The reality we know to be is somewhat different. The poor nations are forced to open their economies to the control of the richer nations.

The WTO's assertion is that the way to achieve food security is by boosting international trade rather than helping farmers grow more food. Under the WTO requirements, many developing countries are becoming net importers of food. People are turning from subsistence farming to cash crop growers. This has fundamental gender implications. The central role of women in domestic food production is now well established, not only in sub Saharan Africa but also in many parts of Asia. Women farmers are finding that their ability to produce and market their produce is increasingly being undermined, whilst those who are benefiting from new opportunities in cash crop production and trade are mainly men.

The adverse affect of trade liberalisation policies on women farmers is illustrated by the IWGGT study of Ghana. The opening up of food market to international competition has meant that when imported food is cheap it displaces domestic crops. The food crops hardest hit are rice and maize that produced and traded by women. There is also competition in quality. Imported rice is praised for having higher quality and so replaces local rice in higher income families. However, some local food such as cassava is not being replaced because consumers prefer it.

It might be argued that some competition is benefiting women as consumer but any benefits are vulnerable to the vagaries of the international market. The ability of women to fulfill their role as food providers is also undermined by the drive for export production, particularly cocoa bean production. Men decide on the allocation of land with the result that export cropping takes place on the more fertile land while food production is pushed to the margins. It is mainly large and medium sized farmers in the cocoa sector who have benefited from the trade liberalisation.

Women's opportunity to engage in this expanding export production is severely limited by gender inequalities in the access to land, technology, credit, training, and transport facilities. Women work in export production as unpaid labourers on their husband's farms. The extent to which they benefit from cash income depends on what their husband's decision on the revenue.

Rose Kiggundu provides a similar story from Ugabda where the export drive is mainly for coffee. The increase in Uganda's revenue from the sale of coffee on the world market is seen as an example of the successful participation of an African country in the new global economy. Coffee growers are experiencing an increase in income but men in male-headed households control this. Women's participation in coffee production is mainly as casual labourers at harvest time.

Staple food crops, particularly maize and beans, are also being promoted for export. This has clear gender implications. These crops were previously grown and marketed by women. But now that the trade in them is becoming so lucrative, women are forced to surrender the cash to the men after selling. Control of production and trade is shifting away from women into the hands of men.

Women farmers in other regions are also experiencing the loss of secure sources of livelihood as a result of trade liberalisation measures. In The Philippines, the National Federation of Peasant Women report that, "The commitment of the Government to the WTO presents yet another grim scenario for peasant women and their families". Vast areas of land are being diverted from the growth of basic staple foods of rice and corn to "high value export corps" like cut flowers, asparagus and eucalyptus. Shortly after accession to the WTO, the country fell into a deep rice crisis that the Government used to justify the opening of the economy to importation of large quantities of rice from the international market. The loss of subsistence and the increase in landlessness is forcing many women to work as hired labourers - as sprayers and packers on banana and pineapple plantations - where they are exposed to pesticides and other dangerous chemicals.

The liberalisation of trade is increasing the employment of women as wage labourers in new and traditional agricultural products. Women are preferred work force in these sectors. Countries such as Bangladesh, where advantageous trade agreements resulted in a dramatic expansion of garment production, may no longer be able to compete. Employment in the garment industry has been presented as a significant new opportunity for poor women in Bangladesh but this may well be short lived. The garment industry is likely to become concentrated in countries where production is most "efficient" and labour costs the lowest. Although this will benefit those countries export earnings it does not bode well for improvements in wage rates or labour conditions.

Women's employment opportunities in the service sector have also increased with the expansion of trade and the liberalisation of financial markets and commercial services. This includes some relatively high paid and prestigious jobs but the main increase has been in routine data entry. In the Caribbean, data entry has become a key export industry with Jamaica'a Digiport facility operating as a FTZ for the service industry. Work regiments are similar to industrial production with long shifts, unhealthy conditions, high work intensity, and strong discipline.

Other service sector jobs increasing with trade liberalisation includes work in restaurants and entertainment establishments, and domestic service. Women in these jobs are poorly paid and particularly vulnerable to sexual exploitation. Many travel across national boundaries to service those in wealthier locations, becoming part of a "frustrated and displaced" global workforce.

Trading patterns established through the WTO are undermining women's traditional sources of livelihood but also providing some new opportunities for employment. These jobs are predominantly highly work intensive, poorly paid, insecure, and with few prospects for promotion. Women seek them as a means of providing for their families in the face of disruption of traditional sources of livelihood and the removal of access to natural resources. Nevertheless, women may well experience some benefits from moving from the constraints of the traditional domestic sphere and into new forms of paid employment. Case studies from Africa, Asia, and Latin America report that women value their new employment as a means of reducing dependency and increasing their self-esteem. For women, the security of traditional production processes is associated with loss of control over sources of livelihood and exposure to new health hazards. However, this may be compensated, in part, by greater control over personal freedom.

Even though women may experience gains as well as losses, this does not alter the fact that the benefits of trade liberalisation are unequally distributed according to gender. Overall, men are better placed to take advantage of new opportunities in production and trade. Sometimes, as in the case of Uganda, this may mean that women lose their traditional sources of income to men who are better able to compete. Even in Ghana where women have traditionally been central to the domestic market system, they only participate in a small degree in international trade.

Everywhere, women's opportunities are inhibited by limited access to education, training, capital, and freedom of movement. These inequalities are not the product of trade liberalisation but they are reinforced in the new patterns of production. The demands of the international market mean that resources are channeled into cash crop production and export manufacture that are largely controlled by men. Women often have little choice but to enter the most exploitative and insecure work situations where they are under the direct supervision of male managers. Although waged employment brings tangible benefits, there is little evidence of long term increases in gender equity either in the workplace or at home.

Women whose lives have been disrupted by the shifting patterns of production associated with trade liberalisation are not easily convinced by the WTO rhetoric. As awareness of trade liberalisation increases amongst women workers so does the movement.

Angela Hale, Women Working Worldwide