Sectoral impacts
Agriculture
Agriculture plays a significant role in the lives of men and women in developing countries, where it represents a large part of total domestic output, as well as being a major source of employment.
trade impacts particularly affect women because of their roles as both producers and managers of food security in households
Women tend to dominate in the agricultural sector in many developing countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Men are often responsible for the production of cash crops, while women usually produce domestic staples, often for home consumption as part of subsistence farming, but also for small-scale trade. The majority of poor farmers have not seen the potential benefits of trade liberalisation. The reduction of import tariffs mandated by the Agreement on Agriculture has instead led to the displacement of local farmers, who are being pushed out of domestic markets as a result of the dumping of cheap, subsidised food imports from other countries. These impacts have mainly affected women, because of their roles as both producers and managers of food security in households.
Services
Services are emerging as a major economic sector for many developing countries. The service sector is dominated by women, for various reasons, including their perceived skills in caring professions and in customer relations, as well as in meticulous modern professions such as data entry. Some of the service industries, such as banking, provide opportunities for women to earn relatively high wages. However, the majority of women employed in the service sector are concentrated in low-skilled, low-paid jobs, and experience more job insecurity than men. Furthermore, while the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) allows for the migration of people to developed economies, this can result in the loss of trained womanpower in the sending countries. Meanwhile in the receiving countries, women involved in domestic work can face poor working conditions and other forms of exploitation.
Textiles and clothing
Textiles and clothing are one of the major employers of female workers, due to the nature of the work and perceptions of women as 'nimble-fingered' - good at detailed, meticulous work. For this reason, women in developing countries are likely to to bear the brunt of recent changes in international trading rules over textiles. Until 2005, the production and export of textiles and clothing was controlled by the Multifibre Agreement (MFA) which set quotas for each country. Part of the Agreement was the requirement for industrialised countries to phase out their quotas and restrictions by 2005. While this system is already benefitting countries such as China, it is likely that smaller countries like Bangladesh will lose out, with a disproportionate impact on the women who constitute the majority of the workforce. It is important to ensure that labour standards, particularly working conditions and redundancies, are not neglected under these altered arrangements.
