This handbook provides an integrated framework for a sustainable, pro-poor and gender-sensitive approach to trade policy-making. A major part of the silence around gender, trade and investment at the level of governance of the trading system would appear to be lack of understanding of the conceptual, empirical and policy links between gender and trade. Paradoxically, along with the view that trade policies are gender blind there is also an underlying popular viewpoint among some trade scholars and trade policy decision-makers that trade liberalisation has unambiguously benefited women in terms of widespread employment. However, emerging evidence shows that trade liberalisation can have both positive and negative effects on women’s economic and social status.

This book is an information and training tool for policy-makers and inter-governmental and civil society organisations interested in building and enhancing their knowledge of the important linkages between trade and investment policy and gender equality objectives and priorities. It also presents recommendations on the key issues as well as the identification of strategies that could be utilised by different stakeholders.

Contents
Foreword, Preface, Executive Summary
1. Multilateral and regional trading arrangements and globalisation
2. Gender and the multilateral trading system (MTS)
3. Agricultural trade liberalisation
4. Services trade liberalisation
5. Investment trade liberalisation
6. Intellectual property rights (IPRs) trade liberalisation
7. Strategies and recommendations for integrating gender into the MTS
Bibliography, Glossary, Appendices, Tables

About The author
Mariama Williams PhD is an international economics and gender consultant, the Research Adviser for the International Gender and Trade Network (ITGN), a Director of the Institute for Law and Economics (ILE-Jamaica) and a member of Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN).