Women often lack equitable access to resources to benefit from trade liberalization. Attention to gender relations in trade can help ensure economic growth for all.
Cross-Cutting Areas
Trade capacity building assistance must also consider key cross-cutting areas, such as gender and the environment. Trade liberalization and trade facilitation can affect men and women in different ways, and as pointed out by the USAID-funded GATE project in its Final Report, “seemingly neutral market mechanisms and macroeconomic policies can reinforce existing inequalities”. As for the environment, USAID TCB assistance has always been predicated on the idea that trade-led economic growth and poverty reduction strategies must be pursued in the broader context of sustainable development. Trade capacity building and efforts to improve environmental protection and sustainable resource management are mutually reinforcing.
TCBoost's Trade and Investment Library features a wealth of documents on the relationships between trade and gender, and trade and the environment. The importance of these relationships cannot be underestimated.