Boosting Women’s Participation in Global Trade

Trade-related disruptions from the Covid-19 global pandemic are disproportionately impacting women. This is largely due to women’s overrepresentation in some of the sectors that have seen the sharpest falls in demand, such as travel and tourism, as well as manufacturing sectors such as footwear and apparel, and telecommunications products.  As a result of this finding, a group of World Trade Organization (WTO) members has agreed to establish an informal working group on trade and gender, to increase the participation of women in global trade.

The Buenos Aires agreement, signed at the 11th WTO ministerial conference in 2017, is a collective initiative that seeks to remove barriers to, and foster, women’s economic empowerment, and has served as the basis of the WTO’s work since then to make trade more inclusive.

There are 127 countries involved – representing the signatories of the Buenos Aires Joint Declaration on Trade and Women’s Economic Empowerment – and they agreed to work collaboratively to encourage women’s participation in national and international trade, and share best practices for conducting gender-based analysis of trade policies.

That’s the good news.  Here’s the not so good news:

The group – which notably does not include the US as it is not a signatory to the Buenos Aires pact – will now work on garnering further support beyond its current 127 members.

We, at wegg®, are open to working with the WTO to ensure the USA is actively involved in this important program.  After all, it’s wegg’s mission to see to it that all women are able to take their business global no matter where they are located.  Our USA door is open.  Contact us here.