Women’s Empowerment and International Trade: The Same Side of the Same Coin?

Positive strides have been made by international institutions and states in reaf rming the need for
women’s empowerment and gender equality. In the eld of international trade law, there has been a wave
of multilateral as well as regional and bilateral initiatives to ensure that international trade enhances
gender equality. This chapter provides an overview of the growing in uence of concerns relating to
women’s empowerment in contemporary trade law and policy debates, and in particular how existing
trade institutions and norms have increasingly accommodated these concerns. In doing so, the chapter
provides a discussion on the close inter-relationship between trade policy and women’s empowerment to
argue why they are on the same side of the same coin. Following this conceptualization, the chapter
assesses how the institution and norms of the World Trade Organization have gone from being
completely gender-blind to gender-aware. The chapter also provides an analysis of the accommodation of
gender-related concerns in regional and bilateral trade agreements. The conclusion offers some
re ections on gaps in these developments and what remains to be done before it can be ensured that
trade policy instruments can be made to work for women.