4. Global Trade
Global trade, also called foreign or international trade, looks at the buying and selling of goods, services, and businesses across country borders and has led to the rise of the global economy. Trade at the international level is heavily linked to geopolitical relations and global events in general. Often, trade is framed by the idea of the division of labor in that economic specialization is imperative to the success of a global market.
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Remedial Herstory Project Editors. "4. Global Trade." The Remedial Herstory Project. November 1, 2025. www.remedialherstory.com.
The Importance of Global Trade for Women
In general, engaging in trade has proven to be extremely positive for the development, maintenance, and growth of economies in all parts of the world and is known to increase productivity, wages, employment opportunities, and resources for people in many demographics—but for women, the impact of investment in global trade cannot be understated. Global trade has been a game changer for individual women’s financial independence. International trade expands the types of work that citizens can engage in. Although these patterns are true for many people, women have especially seen economic gains as countries decide to begin or increase their foreign trade and relations.
Firms that participate in international trade employ significantly more women and provide better working conditions than those that do not. In developing countries, women make up about one-third of the workforce in exporting firms, compared with only a quarter in non-exporting ones. Their representation is even higher in global value chain firms and foreign-owned companies, where women comprise roughly 37% of employees, over ten percentage points higher than in domestic firms.[1] In countries such as Morocco, Romania, and Vietnam, exporting industries employ half or more of all female workers, collectively providing jobs for more than five million women. This access to global markets not only expands employment opportunities but also helps raise women’s earnings. When developing countries double their manufacturing exports, women’s share of total manufacturing wages typically increases by nearly six percentage points due to higher employment and improved pay. This is good not just for women, but for everyone.
Countries without investments in foreign trade and firms that engage beyond their borders are more likely to employ people in “informal work.” Informal work, also called a “gray economy” is work that is done without or with minimal financial compensation. Informal workers may be “paid” under a barter system, non-monetary way, or far less than global market value. Informal work lacks the job security and benefits that often come from formal work. The expansion of international markets has opened doors to formal employment for people across demographics, but especially women, opening opportunity for jobs that provide greater pay, stability, and protection. Women are the overwhelming majority of informal workers. Global trade also contributes to narrowing the wage gap and promoting economic equality, particularly in regions like Africa. Under the African Continental Free Trade Area, projections suggest that by 2035, women’s wages could rise by around 4%, outpacing men’s gains, adding the equivalent of two extra weeks of pay annually for many women.[2] For women, the likelihood of informal employment drops from 20% in low-export sectors to just 13% in high-export ones, a steeper decline than for men. As nations deepen their participation in foreign trade, more women transition into formal sectors, narrowing gender gaps in income and opportunity.
It's not just about money in their pocket, informal work is connected to much poorer health outcomes, both physically and mentally, but, in many circumstances, is the only option for work outside the home available to many women around the world.[3] It’s important to note that maternal health is not only important for women’s lives, but it is indicative of the lives of their children. Breastfeeding mothers need to be especially healthy to pass on adequate nutrition to their offspring. One metanalysis found there was an association between informal employment and worse health outcomes and especially showed poor child and infant nutritional health.
Sectors that have integrated women, women work informally much less frequently, less than 20%, depending on location.[4] It’s important to note that informal work is incredibly rare for men, less than 10% in recent studies. The example of informal work works to show the importance of investment in global trade to elevating the status and financial bargaining power of women. Global trade is directly related to the rise in formal jobs for women around the world. Formal jobs give women a safer path toward financial security and freedom as individuals.
Additionally, companies and firms that export also hire women at a much higher rate than those which do not export: women make up 33% of the workforce in the former and only 24% in the latter in developing countries.[5] Not only are more women hired in companies that are integrated in the global economy, but they are also compensated more, with women’s wages being 2.5% higher when they are employed by a business that exports globally. Finally, when countries double their manufacturing exports, women tend to increase their share of total manufacturing wages by 24-30%.[6]
[1] World Trade Organization, “Women and Trade: The Role of Trade in Promoting Gender Equality,” Washington, DC: World Bank Group, July 30 2020, https://www.wto.org/english/res_e/booksp_e/women_trade_pub2807_e.pdf, p.3.
[2] World Trade Organization, “Women and Trade: The Role of Trade in Promoting Gender Equality,” Washington, DC: World Bank Group, July 30 2020, https://www.wto.org/english/res_e/booksp_e/women_trade_pub2807_e.pdf, p.3.
[3] Emma Aronssoon, Pilar Vidaurre-Teixidó, Magnus Rom Jensen, Solvor Solhaug & Courtney McNamara, “The health consequences of informal employment among female workers and their children: a systematic review,” BioMed Central 19, no. 59 (2023): 1, https://globalizationandhealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12992-023-00958-1#citeas.
[4] World Trade Organization, “Women and Trade,” p.5.
[5] World Trade Organization, “Women and Trade,” p.5.
[6] World Trade Organization, “Women and Trade,” p.5.
Global trade (n.) buying and selling of goods, services, or businesses across national borders; a foundation of the global economy.
Global economy (n.) the interconnected economic activities, markets, and financial systems of countries worldwide.
Global Trade
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The Global Gender Gap
The global gender gap remains deeply entrenched in international trade, which falls under the World Economic Forum’s category of “economic participation and opportunity.” While educational attainment and health gaps have largely closed, women continue to face structural barriers in trade as consumers, workers, and entrepreneurs. Women pay more for imported goods due to tariff disparities, compete for fewer formal jobs in global value chains where men dominate two-thirds of positions, and face discrimination in entrepreneurship through limited financing and bureaucratic corruption. Compounding these challenges, women remain underrepresented in trade leadership, with only a fraction serving as ambassadors or ministers in the World Trade Organization. Together, these inequalities reveal how economic, political, and social factors intersect to maintain women’s exclusion from the full benefits of global commerce.
Women-owned businesses and firms that take on a global trade approach are in scarcity compared to male-owned. In developing countries, men own almost all of manufacturing and service firms, less than a fifth of businesses with a global stake are run by women. Encouragingly, efforts to correct these disparities are gaining traction among policymakers and businesses. The economic case for accelerating change is compelling: closing the trade-related gender gap could add as much as US $12 trillion to global GDP by 2025, while individual firms that achieve greater gender diversity consistently report stronger financial performance.[1] Achieving true equality in trade, therefore, is not only a moral imperative but also a pragmatic pathway to collective prosperity.
[1] Sally Jones, “Why the Gender Gap in International Trade Needs to Close Faster,” EY Global, May 16, 2023, https://www.ey.com/en_gl/insights/global-trade/why-the-gender-gap-in-international-trade-needs-to-close-faster.
Economic specialization (n.), labor or resources on specific tasks, skills, or industries to improve productivity.
Productivity (n.), the efficiency at which goods or services are produced, often measured per worker or per hour.
Global value chain (n.), the international network of production stages involved in creating a product or service.
Informal work (n.) employment without formal contracts, wages, or protections; part of the “gray economy.”
Gray economy (n.), economic activity not regulated or taxed, often involving barter or below-market pay.
Formal employment (n.), legally regulated work with contracts, wages, protections, and benefits.
Trade for Women Business Owners
Where women become entrepreneurs, women’s lives become easier because goods and services are designed with them in mind. Unfortunately, women entrepreneurs continue to receive only a fraction of venture capital funding, about 2–3% overall and just 1% in the UK. (EY Global). It has long been established in studies that diversity drives innovation in the economy: inclusive companies are 1.7 times more likely to lead in creativity and problem-solving.[1] Sadly, women are less likely to build their businesses internationally because women face gender discrimination in their home country on the basis of education, financial independence, and unshared domestic duties.
Women make up a major portion of service sector employees, but the international exportation of services is difficult by technological and policy constraints. Since 2005, trade in services has grown about 17% faster than trade in goods, making the sector a key contributor to inclusive development. Between 1991 and 2017, women’s employment in services rose sharply, from 45% to over two-thirds in upper-middle- and high-income countries, and from 25% to 38% in lower-income nations, outpacing men’s transition into the field.[2] As economies advance, service-sector jobs increasingly require specialized skills, leading more women into high-skill occupations such as management, health care, and education. Women now make up nearly 40% of high-skilled service workers in high-income countries, a 33% increase since 1991.[3] Participation in global value chains has expanded women’s access to formal, better-paid work. Women in global value chain linked industries are ten percentage points more likely to hold formal jobs, and firms engaged in exporting, importing, or foreign ownership consistently employ more women than those that are not globally integrated.[4]
Still, it would be a lot easier for women to extend their businesses across borders if governments didn’t institute tariff policies that disproportionally targeted goods consumed by women.
[1] Sally Jones, “Why the Gender Gap in International Trade Needs to Close Faster.”
[2] Sally Jones, “Why the Gender Gap in International Trade Needs to Close Faster.”
[3] Sally Jones, “Why the Gender Gap in International Trade Needs to Close Faster.”
[4] Sally Jones, “Why the Gender Gap in International Trade Needs to Close Faster.”
Trade for Women Business Owners
The Pink Tariff and Connections to Power
Although overall US tariff rates have fallen significantly with entry into the World Trade Organization and the expansion of free trade agreements, sexism and gender discrimination has found a way to permeate the world of trade policy. The connection between gender and these types of policies have been named the Pink Tariff, the policy reason behind the “Pink Tax” discussed in the last chapter, because of the gendered way these monetary systems affect women workers and consumers. Economic sectors that usually have a higher percentage of women workers over men workers see higher tariffs for trading; these sectors include food and beverages and textiles and apparel. These types of restrictions have negative implications in all aspects of the supply chain. High tariffs inherently lead to less competition, since fewer businesses are willing to pay more money to export. Less competition in this sense also leads to less hiring competition, which, in this case, directly affects jobs that are normally taken up by women.
In the United States, research shows that goods primarily purchased by women often face steeper import tariffs than those marketed to men. For example, between 2006 and 2016, women’s apparel carried an additional tariff cost of about $2.77 billion compared to men’s clothing, with the disparity growing over time.[1] Because women tend to spend more on imported consumer goods, lowering these tariffs would directly reduce their cost of living and enhance their purchasing power. Despite clothing representing only 6% of total imports, it generates nearly half of US tariff revenue.[2] The persistence of these high rates, reinforced during the US-China trade war when punitive apparel tariffs rose even higher, underscores a strong protectionist stance in this sector. While the federal government sets the tariff schedules in the United States, there is currently no law that prohibits gender discrimination in the pricing of products for consumers.
The Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the US further complicates matters by classifying apparel and footwear not only by material and construction but also by gender, an approach not adopted internationally. As of 2014, 86% of US apparel imports and 79% of footwear imports were gender-classified, with 155 categories for men’s items and 160 for women’s.[3] Many of these carry different tariff rates based solely on gender, often to the detriment of women, with 78 provisions explicitly imposing unequal rates between men’s and women’s goods.[4]
Similar patterns appear across developing nations. In a study of 54 countries, removing import tariffs was projected to raise real incomes for female-headed households in more than three-quarters of them. These households typically allocate a larger portion of their spending to agricultural products, food, that are often subject to higher tariffs, while relying less on wage income and more on home production, social benefits, and transfers. As a result, tariff elimination could increase women’s real income by as much as 2.5% more than that of male-headed households.16 In nations like Burkina Faso and Cameroon, removing trade-related gender biases could provide financial gains comparable to a family’s yearly spending on education or health care, underscoring how fairer trade policies can meaningfully advance women’s welfare.
[1] World Trade Organization, “Women and Trade,” p.5.
[2] Miranda Hatch, “Is Trade Sexist? How “Pink” Tariff Policies’ Harmful Effects Can Is Trade Sexist? How “Pink” Tariff Policies’ Harmful Effects Can Be Curtailed Through Litigation and Legislation Be Curtailed Through Litigation and Legislation”, BYU Law Review Volume 47 Issue 2 (2023): 656 https://digitalcommons.law.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3351&context=lawreview.
[3] Miranda Hatch, “Is Trade Sexist?” p.657.
[4] Miranda Hatch, “Is Trade Sexist?” p.657.
Woman Business Owner in Apparel
Women Leaders on Trade Policy
The limitations to expanding global trade and women’s businesses internationally can be overcome at the policy level, but this will require women to overcome political hurdles to get women at the negotiating table. As of 2023, women held only 22.8% of cabinet-level posts worldwide, most often in social rather than economic ministries.[1] Increasing female leadership in trade policy could strengthen focus on women’s issues and expand opportunities for equitable participation. Some countries are making strides toward this goal. Chile pioneered the inclusion of gender chapters in its free-trade agreements with Uruguay, Canada, and Argentina. This important focus on gender in trade agreements can help focus national energy and domestic policy toward those ends, but it will remain to be seen if these are merely symbolic. Canada advanced this model further in its 2019 FTA with Israel, making gender provisions subject to binding dispute resolution. Globally, over 80 trade agreements now explicitly reference gender, and well over 250 when clauses embedded in these agreements are examined.[2] Real change will require more than words, but deeds and enforceable mechanisms embedded in the trade agreement language to ensure nations follow through.
Accelerating progress toward gender parity in global trade requires coordinated efforts across governments, international organizations, businesses, and civil society. While free-trade agreements have become a focal point for embedding gender equality into trade policy, real progress also depends on domestic laws, institutional programs, and community initiatives. International bodies like the World Trade Organization, the United Nations, and the World Bank have instituted programs to enhance women’s economic participation and provide data-driven insights.[3] Governments can further narrow the gender trade gap by improving women’s access to finance, mobility, and information. Strategies include enforcing gender-based procurement standards, creating women-centered training programs. Tailored information networks and mentorship opportunities are equally crucial.
Tracking economic trade by gender and gendered impact is also crucial to improve policy. Data collection needs to be gender-disaggregated, where genders are broken down so that disparate impacts can be adequately measured, rather than lumping the genders together. Good data is essential to sustain these reforms and measure their impact. The private sector also benefits from gender-sensitive data, which reveals inequities in areas ranging from vehicle safety to financial advising. For meaningful and lasting change, businesses must turn rhetoric into action, lobbying for stronger gender policies, appointing more women to decision-making roles, and prioritizing partnerships with women-led firms. If these stakeholders act collaboratively, closing the gender gap in international trade could happen within decades rather than the current projection of 131 years.[4]
[1] World Trade Organization, “Women and Trade,” p.5.
[2] World Trade Organization, “Women and Trade,” p.5.
[3] Sally Jones, “Why the Gender Gap in International Trade Needs to Close Faster.”
[4] Sally Jones, “Why the Gender Gap in International Trade Needs to Close Faster.”
Woman Policy Maker
Conclusion
The intersection of gender and international trade reveals both the transformative potential and the persistent inequities of globalization. While global trade has undeniably opened doors for women, offering greater access to formal employment, higher wages, and entrepreneurial pathways, it has also exposed how deeply structural inequalities remain embedded in economic systems. Women continue to face barriers rooted in unequal access to capital, education, and global value chains, all of which limit their ability to compete on equal footing. Moreover, the persistence of gendered trade policies, such as the “Pink Tariff” and “Pink Tax,” underscores how market mechanisms can perpetuate bias even as they promise opportunity.
True gender parity in global trade requires more than open markets; it demands intentional policy reform and gender-responsive data that illuminate where disparities persist. Empowering women as workers, entrepreneurs, and consumers strengthens not only individual livelihoods but also the broader global economy. As nations reconsider their trade frameworks in an increasingly interconnected world, the inclusion and advancement of women must become a central measure of economic success—not a peripheral goal.
Checking for Understanding
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How does participation in international trade affect women’s access to formal employment compared to informal work, and why is this distinction important?
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What factors make women-owned businesses less likely to engage in global trade or participate in global value chains (GVCs)?
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Why does the service sector present additional challenges for women participating in international trade?
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What is meant by the term “Pink Tariff,” and how does it contribute to gender inequality in both production and consumption?
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According to the text, what types of systemic changes are necessary to promote gender equity in global trade?
Extension Activities
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Using a map, chart where goods and services you enjoy come from.
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Research the labor conditions and quality of pay by gender in the places your goods and services are from.
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Research tariffs on apparel in your nation and how they impact consumers of all genders.
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Draft a short proposal for a government policy that better gender-neutral tariffs.
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Research how successful women entrepreneurs have scaled their businesses globally.
Bibliography
Aronssoon, Emma, “The health consequences of informal employment among female workers and their children: a systematic review,” BioMed Central 19, no. 59 (2023): 1-12, https://globalizationandhealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12992-023-00958-1#citeas. CARE Staff, “Raising their voices for change: women garment workers speak up,” CARE, last modified children: a systematic review,” BioMed Central 19, no. 59 (2023): 1-12, https://www.care.org/ news-and-stories/ideas/raising-their-voices-for-change-women-garment-workers-speak-up/. Jones, Sally, “Why the gender gap in international trade needs to close faster,” Ernst & Young, last modified May 16, 2023, https://www.ey.com/en_gl/global-trade/why-the-gender-gap -in-international-trade-needs-to-close-faster. Hatch, Miranda, “Is Trade Sexist? How “Pink” Tariff Policies’ Harmful Effects Can Be Curtailed Through Litigation and Legislation,” BYU Law Review 47, no. 2 (2022): 651-684, https://digitalcommons.law.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3351&context=lawreview. “Women in informal economy,” UN Women, https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/in-focus/csw61 /women-in-informal-economy#:~:text=Working%20in%20this%20informal%2C%20or, including%20risk%20of%20sexual%20harassment. World Bank, “Women and Trade: The role of trade in promoting gender equality,” (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, 2020), https://www.wto.org/english/res_e/booksp_e/women_trade_pub2807_e.pdf. World Trade Organization. “Women and Trade: The Role of Trade in Promoting Gender Equality.” Washington, DC: World Bank Group, July 30 2020, https://www.wto.org/english/res_e/booksp_e/women_trade_pub2807_e.pdf.
