Presentation on “Making Trade Agreements Work for Gender Equality: The widening negotiation capacity gap?” at the Research Forum at the 2022 ASIL Midyear Meeting, Miami, United States of America

Mexico - 10 November 2022

The American Society of International Law hosted a Midyear Meeting in early November 2022. The meeting encompassed several events, including leadership meetings of the Society's Executive Council and the Board of Editors of the American Journal of International Law; the Research Forum, which features cutting-edge international law scholarship by more than 90 authors; and programming for practitioners. The Midyear Meeting has been held since 2010 in Miami, Los Angeles, Athens & Atlanta, New York, Chicago, Washington DC, Seattle, St. Louis, New York, virtually, Miami, and Pittsburgh.

In the recent years, there has been an upsurge in the number of countries that are mainstreaming gender equality concerns in their trade and investment agreements. These recent developments challenge the long-standing assumption that trade, investment, and gender equality are not related. They also show that gender mainstreaming in trade and investment agreements is here to stay. However, very few countries – mostly developed countries – have led this mainstreaming approach and have made efforts to incentivize other countries to negotiate gender-responsive trade and investment agreements. The majority of developing countries are yet to take their first steps in negotiating such policy instruments with a gender lens, and their hesitation can be grounded in various reasons including fears of protectionism, lack of data, paucity of understanding and expertise, and, more broadly, constraints relating to their negotiation capacity. Moreover, the inclusion of gender-related concerns in the negotiation of such agreements has deepened and widened the negotiation capacity gap between developed and developing countries. In this presentation Dr. Amrita Bahri, Co-Chair Professor, WTO Chairs Programme (Mexico), attempted to assess this widening negotiation capacity gap with the help of empirical research, and how this capacity gap can lead to disproportionate and negative repercussions for developing countries more than developed countries.

More on the Midyear Meeting of the American Society of International Law: https://www.asil.org/midyear-meeting

LINK TO THE PUBLICATION: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/world-trade-review/article/abs/g...

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