16th Global Summit of Women, Egypt, Cairo
12 June 2006
How Trade Can Work For Women
Thank you for the opportunity to share with you my views on how trade can
benefit women. As I am attending this summit for the first time, I want to
express my sincere appreciation and congratulate Ms Natividat for succeeding in
putting together such a worthwhile event. All the many wonderful things that I
have heard about the summit are being confirmed, including that this is a
gathering of high calibre women leaders from around the world who have come
together to share their visions and strategies on how best to improve human
lives. For this and numerous other reasons, it is a great pleasure and
privilege to be here to address women leaders from across the globe.
I am Elizabeth Thabethe, and I am one of two deputy ministers of South
Africaâs Department of Trade and Industry. Minister Mandisi Mpahlwa leads the
department and I serve under him. You may know my predecessor, Mrs Lindiwe
Hendricks, who is now South Africaâs Minister of Water and Forestry.
My overall responsibility as deputy minister is consumer and corporate
regulatory matters as well as mainstreaming the issues of the second economy as
the growth of the South African economy is facilitated. This also includes
addressing the equity issues in terms of race, gender, and geographical
spread.
As already indicated in my introduction, my input here will be based on how
trade can work for women. This is a very difficult subject, especially for a
minister coming from the African continent, which is currently actively
fighting for its fair share in the global trade arena. In two weeks time, my
minister will be here to further engage on this matter as part of the African
trade ministers. As part of deliberations on how women can benefit from trade,
I will first share with you why trade is important for women, the business
opportunities in trade that could be pursued by women, and conclude on how
women from around the globe can form a united force to further engage with the
subject.
Honourable ministers, it is no secret that our developing countries,
particularly those within the African continent and after many years of
engaging in world trade primarily as exporters of raw materials and primary
commodities, still continue to suffer from unstable or declining prices and
unfavourable terms of trade for our goods. The onus is now on us as leaders of
developing countries to foster the development needs and economies of our
countries, to apply and adopt trade analysis coupled with research that can
inform the decisions made for programmes being implemented. Critically
important to this is to prioritise issues of food security, rural development,
job creation, social and transportation infrastructure, environmental
protection and the development of sustainable livelihoods in agriculture. Since
the majority of the poor happen to be women, it is critical that gender is
mainstreamed in trade issues.
Honourable ministers, there are mainly three fundamental reasons why trade
is a critical aspect when facilitating women empowerment. These reasons include
a social, development and an economic viewpoint. First, trade policies and
programmes are not gender neutral as many involved in this field believe. Trade
policies at an international, continental and regional level do impact
differently on men and women. This is mainly because women and men today,
anywhere in the world and within the region in particular, occupy different
economic and social status. In most cases, the experience is that men are in
the majority in regard to advantageous positions. It is also a fact that men
and women respond differently to economic and trade policies because they have
different sets of private resources and levels of access to public ones. Status
and control over such resources are greatly determined by the gender power
relation, in particular the sexual division of labour between men and women.
All of this puts women around the world in a more economically disadvantaged
position than men and creates a trade policy issue of gender.
Second, from a development point of view, women in comparison to men remain
the majority of the poor. Trade is and continues to be an important tool for
economic development, particularly for most developed countries. For many such
countries, it also continues to be a tool for promoting development that is
anchored in ensuring food security and rural livelihoods, on which many women
and children depend. Thus trade can be said to have the overall responsibility
of ensuring that economic development for women is facilitated in a manner that
will benefit both men and women equally. This can be achieved by ensuring that
priorities and needs addressed through economic development are met in a gender
sensitive manner, something that should be a feature in all trade policy
formulation, analysis and implementation. Critical to this are the basic issues
of food security, rural development, job creation and provision of social
infrastructure, amongst others.
Third, from an economic point of view, trading is about the exchange of
goods and services, and women are involved in the process. In most cases, women
are involved in the production and the provision of goods through both the
formal and informal economy. In the formal economy, women are involved as
workers in various companies; in the informal sector, women are involved
through households. The household sector in many developing countries plays a
very critical position in supporting national production and social
development. This alone warrants women as active agents and participants of
trade.
With the move towards globalisation and trade liberation, various
governments find themselves in a position where their capabilities and
willingness towards advancing gender equality are compromised. In some
countries, trade liberalisation may even encourage and impose exploitation and
abuse on women, mainly in the interest of attracting high capital investment.
Such abuse can happen through a compromise on labour rights, or gender
equality, including cuts in social expenditure on social policies. In most
cases, these are crucial for the economic and social advancement of women and
their families.
Honourable ministers, globalisation has integrated economies and cultures,
and heralds the potential for a common international trade law. However, since
the Battle for Seattle in 1999, the world has witnessed the rhetoric and
actions of a large anti-globalisation movement. This has seen many negatives
being cited with regards to trade. As much as these are real, it is my belief
that one reason for our being here today is to find solutions, and ways to
catalyse social and economic change in order to improve the lives of the people
in our communities. Whether we like it or not, trade is here to stay, and our
challenge as leaders is to identify and exploit with our women the
opportunities presented to us by trade.
International trade is one way of leading change. This has everything to do
with working together on a global level to unlock the potential of our
communities in order that we can continue to create wealth, jobs, prosperity,
and a win-win outcome for all, developed and developing countries alike. At a
personal level we must engage with the subject and make it our business to
achieve this.
Advocates of globalisation demonstrate the efficiencies that trade
liberalisation bring to both developed and developing countries. One of the
opportunities I have identified is encouraging our women to focus on export and
international business. Higher exports pay for goods and services that are more
cheaply priced abroad. The need to compete in world markets forces companies to
become more efficient. Recently it has been reported that exporting firms tend
to pay good salaries. Imports, if carefully managed and monitored, can bring
cheaper food and clothing for working families. New technologies have been
reported to bring greater competition, both of which boost economic growth.
The effects of globalisation can be multi-faceted. In some countries, it has
been found that one in five jobs depend on exports. Companies that export tend
to pay better wages than non-exporters and have safer, healthier work places.
They are also better âplugged inâ to new technologies; have more competitive
business models; and, offer more training and career development. It is not
just that exporters are better employers. Change is most likely to come from
human capital, and exporters are generally more committed than their
non-exporting contemporaries to the development of human capital. Education and
skills lead to career development, and alliances and commitment to
international best practice contribute to productivity and overall business
performance.
With regards to technology, many businesses are operating in a world of
Internet and e-commerce where technology and change are in a perpetual race.
Comparative advantage is often achieved through developing new, innovative,
products, services or business processes. For many companies, it is the value
of these ideas that earns them new customers and new markets. As much as this
is the case, the challenge is to assist our companies to find strategies to
protect, manage, and capitalise on their intellectual property.
Honourable ministers, we need to rigorously search for trade opportunities
that can help us to facilitate the economic empowerment of women. Current
research shows that womenâs economic empowerment, if carefully managed, can
reduce gender inequalities that exist between men and women. Strategies for
these will include building womenâs capacities to participate in trade by
promoting their access to jobs, credit, education and training. Thus, it
becomes imperative for government to establish effective strategies for
supporting and strengthening woman-owned enterprises.
Women entrepreneurship in countries moving towards market economies creates
the potential for women to gain jobs by producing local goods for the
international markets. In addition, these women are afforded the opportunity to
work from their homes. In some countries, they continue to gain new jobs in
assembling products for export abroad. As new areas of work are being created,
the majority of women are continuously presented with opportunities to render
services to international clients and, in return, charge a fee for this, an
example being the Service and Tourism Sector.
In addition, with Information and Technology the centre of the international
economy, women are making inroads in this sector both in manufacturing goods
and presenting and simplifying knowledge required for trade and business
facilitation. The quest for providing the world with indigenous alternative
medical cures is also presenting women with more opportunities for inventing
and exploring. These and other opportunities presented through the African
Growth Opportunity Act will assist us in advancing the economic empowerment of
women.
In conclusion, despite the rhetoric surrounding free trade, it is crucial
that least developed countries (LDC) governments and women in particular accept
the reality when it comes to Free Trade: All are not on equal ground, nor will
all countries benefit equally from this process. The issue is not whether trade
is free, but that we ensure that the terms under which we trade will free our
citizens from the chains of poverty. Our role is to ensure that all is not lost
for poor countries, particularly for the women and children who bear the brunt
of poverty and the negative costs associated with it. As women of the world, we
must begin to engage with the process of making trade policies a subject of the
power dynamics between power blocks, amongst countries and, most of all,
between men and women. The biggest challenge we face is to engage with this
process as part of addressing the historical social and economic inequities
that have determined the distribution of economic resources at both national
and international level.
Issued by: Department of Trade and Industry
12 June 2006
Source: Department of Trade and Industry (http://www.thedti.gov.za)
