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Gender and Trade

Submitted by Otaviano Canuto on Wed, 07/27/2011 - 10:29

Gender inequality and discrimination can affect many areas of life, from a women’s access to basic health services to her prospects for education and future earnings. Accordingly, in order to overcome these disparities, development practitioners have begun to collect gender-disaggregated data and address gender elements in the design and implementation of aid programs. By “gender-informing” projects, development institutions, such as the World Bank, can better overcome discrimination, avoid aggravating existing inequalities, and enhance human capital for the future.

Indeed, adopting a gender-informed perspective can improve the effectiveness of many initiatives—not least of all those aimed at promoting trade. Unveiled this summer, the World Bank’s new trade strategy, Leveraging Trade for Development and Inclusive Growth, focuses on enhancing trade competitiveness and encouraging greater diversification in the sector (among other goals). Crucial to achieving these aims—as argued by the authors of the most recent Economic Premise—is to analyze the gender components of value chains, sectors, and labor markets in an effort to design and implement the most gender-informed initiatives.

As highlighted in “Gender-Informing Aid for Trade: Entry Points and Initial Lessons Learned from the World Bank,” Elisa Gamberoni and Jose Guilherme Reis show that “gender-informing” projects in the trade sector can have remarkable effects.

Money Can’t Buy Equality

Submitted by Otaviano Canuto on Wed, 03/30/2011 - 09:50

South Asia has been one of the world’s success stories in terms of rapid economic growth. With India leading the way, South Asia’s poverty rate has fallen from 60 percent in 1981 to 40 percent in 2005. However, during the same period, the number of poor people—those living on less than $1.25 per day—actually increased from 549 million to 595 million over the same period. What’s more, social indicators such as gender parity, secondary education enrollment, and health have not improved in line with growth.

So how do we account for this apparent paradox? Conventional wisdom suggests that growth is sufficient for poverty reduction and social progress, but is this the case in South Asia? Perhaps not, says Ejaz Ghani, Economic Advisor in the World Bank’s South Asian region and author of “The South Asian Development Paradox: Can Social Outcomes Keep Pace With Growth?” the most recent in the Economic Premise research series.

“The paradox of South Asia is that growth has been instrumental in reducing poverty rates, but poverty rates have not fallen enough to reduce the total number of poor people,” explains Ghani. And as the total number of poor people expands, he is quick to warn, “Human development, particularly education and health, has not kept pace with income growth. And growth has not been gender inclusive.”

How Do Women Weather Economic Shocks?

Submitted by Otaviano Canuto on Wed, 01/19/2011 - 17:20

From the Latin American Debt crises to East Asia’s financial sector turmoil, past macroeconomic shocks have traditionally affected women differently than men. Such asymmetries are even more evident in the context of today’s financial crisis, where gender-differentiated impacts are expected to affect women more acutely than ever.

As women’s participation in the globalized workforce has steadily increased, the present shock is expected to have greater effects on women’s

The Day After Tomorrow: The Final Battle in the War Against Poverty

Submitted by Otaviano Canuto, co-authors: Marcelo Giugale on Wed, 11/03/2010 - 16:23

This is the third in a series of blogs where we take a look at the issues and the countries that will be at the forefront of the development agenda, not now, not next year, but over the next 2 to 5 years—thus, “after tomorrow”1.

There is now a budding consensus on what reduces poverty: it is

My Own View on Women

Submitted by Otaviano Canuto on Tue, 03/09/2010 - 09:51

On Monday, the world marked International Women’s Day. As a husband and father of strong, wonderful women, I am always very much aware of the occasion. But as the Vice President responsible for the gender portfolio at the World Bank, women’s day became a powerful reminder of all the things we still need to do in the quest for gender equality.

Women earn some 22% less in salary than their male counterparts, and their access to credit is limited. In Africa, for instance, women receive 1% of total credit going to agriculture though they represent a majority of workers in the sector. In addition, women’s risk of dying from maternal causes in developing countries is 13 times higher than in industrialized nations.

The Bank has done its share in trying to overcome these problems, but we haven’t always been a shining example. It took us 33 years from our creation to appoint a Women in Development Adviser. Twenty years after that, Jim Wolfensohn gave his first major speech as Bank president at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, and proposed universal primary education for girls and boys by 2010. Finally, we established a Director position for Gender and we adopted a gender strategy in 2001.

The Gender Perspectives of the Global Crisis of 2008

Submitted by Raj Nallari on Tue, 07/28/2009 - 16:10

This is a summary of materials available from ILO and World Bank.

The financial and economic crises of 2008 had gender-specific impacts and placed a disproportionate burden on women, in particular poor, migrant and minority women. Even though both women and men are affected by job losses, women are often laid off first, as men are traditionally considered to be the main “breadwinners”. Some of the implications of the global financial and economic crisis on women are:

Fridays Academy: Gender and Macroeconomic Management

Submitted by Ignacio Hernandez on Fri, 01/23/2009 - 16:54

From Raj Nallari and Breda Griffith's lecture notes. This week we finish our series on Gender and Macroeconomic Management.

 

Empirical Evidence on Impact of Globalization on Women (and IV)

 

Gender differences during financial crises

There is some evidence from United States and some developing countries that women are more risk averse than men in investing their pension contributions (Bajtelsmit and Bernasek, 1996; Bajtelsmit and Van Derhei, 1997; Hinz, McCarthy and Turner, 1996). While studies on gender impact of financial crises are limited, evidence from both Indonesia and the Philippines show that as men became unemployed, the amount of work done by women increased (women as shock absorbers).  Frankenberg, Thomas and Beegle (1999) estimated that during the financial crises of 1997-98 in Indonesia, employment decreased by 1.3 per cent for women, while for women it increased by 1 per cent.  When unpaid work is also included, there is an increase for both men and women, but for men the increase is only 1.3 per cent, while for women it is 7 per cent.  During the financial crisis of South Korea in 1997-98, employment declined by 3.8 per cent for men and 7.1 per cent for women (Lee and Rhee, 1999).
 

Gender and Migration

Fridays Academy: Gender and Macroeconomic Management

Submitted by Ignacio Hernandez on Fri, 01/16/2009 - 10:43

From Raj Nallari and Breda Griffith's lecture notes.

 

Empirical Evidence on Impact of Globalization on Women (III)

 

Gender wage gap

Oostendorp (2004) provides a cross-country study of the impact of globalization on the occupational gender wage gap using data from International Labor Organization’s data set on gender wage gap for the period 1983–99 in 161 narrowly defined occupations in more than 80 countries around the world and finds that:

(i) the occupational gender wage gap appears to be narrowing with increases in GDP per capita;

(ii) there is a significantly narrowing impact of trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) net inflows on the occupational gender wage gap for low-skill occupations, both in poorer and richer countries, and for high-skill occupations in richer countries;

(iii) there is no evidence of a narrowing impact of trade, but there is evidence of a widening impact of FDI net inflows on the high-skill occupational gender wage gap in poorer countries;

and (iv) wage-setting institutions have a strong impact on the occupational gender wage gap in richer countries. 

Fridays Academy: Gender and Macroeconomic Management

Submitted by Ignacio Hernandez on Fri, 01/02/2009 - 12:28

 From Raj Nallari and Breda Griffith's lecture notes.

 

Empirical Evidence on Impact of Globalization on Women (II)

 

Trade-related gains.

Trade-related gains in employment for women in developing countries have occurred in export processing zones (EPZs), subcontract work for larger firms and in the informal sector.   In all of these, women’s employment is characterized by long hours, job insecurity and unhealthy working conditions, as well as low pay.

In Ecuador, flower-exports increased and women benefited. In Bangladesh, about 2 million jobs were created in textiles and apparel industry, majority of workers are women.  However, trade openness implies that imports of goods and services would also rise and women who are in the import-substitution industries could lose jobs (e.g. as happened in small farming agriculture in Sub-Saharan African countries where women had to compete with cheaper imports).

As shown in the following graph, share of women employed in export manufacturing in selected East Asian countries is larger compared with women’s employment in other manufacturing. This re-confirms that trade openness contributed to employment of women in selected countries for which data is available.  In other words, employment in import-susbstituting manufacturing did not create as many jobs as in the export manufacturing sector.  But, what about the wage rates in export and non-export manufacturing?  Next week we will look at the gender wage gap.

 

 

Fridays Academy: Gender and Macroeconomic Management

Submitted by Ignacio Hernandez on Fri, 12/26/2008 - 03:37

As usual on Fridays, from Raj Nallari and Breda Griffith's lecture notes.

 

Empirical Evidence on Impact of Globalization on Women

Available studies and data, which are rather limited, is arranged around some broad themes and discussed below and next week.  Little is known about the impact of macroeconomic policies on women, such as changes in exchange rates, interest rates, minimum wages, and commodity prices.

 

Exchange rate fluctuations

These are common in developing countries while responding to shocks usually emanating from policies in G-3 countries.  Exchange rate fluctuations impact upon domestic investment, prices of tradables, and wages, particularly in more competitive industries, such as textiles, garments, agro-processing, cut-flowers, and low value-added manufacturing goods.  Goldberg (2001) and Tracy find some evidence from the United States that exchange-rate shifts impact upon: (i) the wages of women who remain with their same jobs, (ii) the wages of women who change jobs, and (iii) the frequencies of job-changing.  For example, a 10-percent depreciation of the dollar, for example, is estimated to raise women's wages by roughly 1 percent. However, for women who have changed jobs, the estimated wage increase is over 2 percent, while for women who stay on their jobs the estimated wage increase is 0.75 percent. For both men and women, the strongest effects of exchange rate volatility are observed among the less-educated workers.
 

Factor Mobility