• Gender impacts

Gender impacts of trade liberalisation

This report is the outcome of the APRODEV GOOD Conference which looked at tracing the linkages between food security, gender and trade liberalisation. It discusses these issues, with case studies, and sets out recommendations to act against discriminatory polices.

In food security, a framework of food availability, access to food and food utilisation, all in the context of livelihood security is discussed. An analysis of the global, national and household levels of food security are taken into account, as well as the intra household level, as the household is often the arena of domestic competition for resources.

In gender, productive and reproductive roles of women as well as their practical and strategic needs are examined. Decision making, and the right to choice and to voice, for women and men, is seen as vital.

In trade liberalisation three main impacts of the Common Agricultural Policy and WTO policies are examined:

• dumping of cheap subsidised food from industrialised countries
• restricting the right of developing countries to provide their food producers with domestic support and protection
• limiting access by developing country exporters to the EU and other Northern markets

The links between food security and gender were fairly explicit and many shared values were identified between the two, such as empowerment and self determination. The links between gender and trade liberalisation were more implicit, based on the assumption that, if liberalisation damages poor countries, the women in them are especially vulnerable.

Main recommendations include:

• develop an analytical framework on linkages of gender, food security and trade
• raise moral and ethical voices on agricultural production
• new networking efforts are needed to link the development, social, environmental and women’s movements or peasant organizations
• build up broad campaigns on dumping and TRIPS
• call for an impact assessment of CAP on developing countries and gender equity
• mainstream budgets into gender

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