While women are joining the global workforce in increasing numbers, the changing nature of employment as a result of globalization and trade liberalization has had a dramatic impact on their work and on the rest of their lives. But that impact is different for women and for men - what’s known in the jargon as the "gender differential".

Above and beyond its frequently positive impact on the economy in general - opening new markets, attracting investment in infrastructure and increasing wage levels and productivity -- liberalization has undoubtedly created many opportunities for working women. Expanding markets - especially in labour-intensive export industries like textile and clothing, footwear, horticulture and data processing - are doing particularly well in low-income developing countries with a large surplus of cheap and mostly unskilled female labour. The freer "movement of natural persons" - or temporary migration - envisioned under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) is already dramatically increasing the number of migrant workers. In the western hemisphere, women accounted for more than half of all migrants in 2000; in the US alone, most garment workers, and the lowest-paid farm workers, are migrant women who left their own countries to find jobs in the North, and whose remittances back home contribute greatly to the national economy. At the same time, however, even in sectors with great potential for women’s employment, women are still earning less than men and are stuck in the lower end of the pay and skills scales. Competition among developing countries has put downward pressure on wages, and women, especially in rural areas and the urban informal sector of the economy, are particularly vulnerable.

In many cases liberalization has also involved the removal of agricultural subsidies paid by developing countries to small-scale farmers, most of whom are women, resulting in widespread job loss. In some African and Latin American countries that have diversified into non-traditional agricultural exports - such as fruit, vegetables and cut flowers - women are able to find new jobs and now comprise the lion’s share of the workforce in those sectors. But work conditions may be precarious, because the work is seasonal and often involves the use of pesticides, causing major health problems. And with much of the employment in these sectors controlled by transnational corporations (TNCs), such problems may not always be covered by government regulation.

The same can be said of the 200-odd export processing zones (EPZs) created by some 50 developing countries to attract foreign investors seeking to reduce production costs by outsourcing non-core functions to low-cost sites. While EPZs usually pay better than agriculture or domestic service, women -- who represent 80% of workers in these zones -- are again confined to low-paid and low-skilled jobs, earning 20-to-50% less than men, according to the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM). In those EPZs where production is more capital-intensive and the technologies more sophisticated, it is the men who predominate among technical and skilled workers. In Malaysia, for example, where EPZ production is concentrated in high-tech electronics, food processing, services, pharmaceuticals and IT, women comprise only 54% of workers, as opposed to 90% in a country like Nicaragua, where textiles are the biggest EPZ product.

Nor does the wage gap necessarily disappear over time. In successful export-oriented economies - such as Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Republic of Korea and Singapore - female wages reached a plateau of 58-to-65% of male wages, proving that "the competitive forces arising from foreign trade did not eliminate the wage gap", according to an UNCTAD study prepared for the São Paulo conference. To remedy this, long-term strategies are needed both to increase the technological and value-added content of developing-country exports and to ensure gender equality in education and training.

The services sector is widely regarded as offering enormous employment opportunities for women, particularly in online, export-oriented data processing. Women in India now hold about 30% of all professional jobs in the software industry, according to the ILO. Examples abound worldwide of how women have successfully tapped ICT - from online handicraft sales to call centres and mobile phone usage fees -- as a source of income. But the infamous "digital divide" continues to reflect the much longer-standing gender divide in the world of work. And as the ILO points out, "as the traditional manufacturing industries that previously employed women gradually disappear, the women finding jobs in the new, often ICT-related industries are rarely the same ones as those who lost their jobs in the traditional sectors".

Outsourcing, and "offshoring" in particular, is another outcome of globalization. Increasingly, it involves informal subcontracting by TNCs or their affiliates, which employ women as temporary workers for production and collection or to do work at home. Such informal arrangements provide minimum wages or piecework pay and very little, if any, job security or social benefits.

In short, "the liberalization of services can have the potential of enhancing the efficiency and competitiveness of host economies, but at the risk of creating or worsening inequities for the poor and for women", says the UNCTAD study. Strong domestic regulation and safeguards may thus be needed to protect women workers and other small-scale service suppliers. Governments must also secure women’s access to education, health, land, capital and credit and vouchsafe such safety nets as pensions, unemployment benefits and food transfers.

Multilateral trade rules and women

The impact of trade on gender extends beyond liberalization itself to the WTO rules governing the multilateral trading system. In agriculture, for example: the erosion of preferential arrangements granted to non-traditional agricultural exports from the African, Caribbean and Pacific group of developing countries will likely affect women the most, since they comprise the majority of workers in this sector. Similarly in manufacturing: the phasing-out of the multi-fibre arrangements quota system under the WTO Agreement on Textiles and Clothing will further liberalize the sector, with a potentially disproportionate impact on women. Production will move to larger countries with a huge female labour surplus, to the detriment of women in many of the least developed countries (LDCs) that depend heavily on these arrangements.