Gender and Trade

Abstract

There has been an increasingly expanding literature exploring the linkages between trade liberalization and several measures of gender inequality (i.e. in income, employment opportunities, consumption, working conditions and intrahousehold bargaining). In this paper, we provide a comprehensive up-to-date literature review of existing theory and evidence of trade-gender linkages, clearly spelling out the key mechanisms, their empirical support and conditionalities. While most studies suggest that trade policies and agreements are far from being gender neutral, the magnitude and sign of effects is largely mediated by several intermediary factors (i.e. culture, access to education and production factors, governance). Along these lines, an integral part of our analysis includes a detailed discussion of research gaps often ignored within existing work on gender and trade and suggestions for expanding the current research focus.