Key note speech delivered by Minister for Foreign Trade Ann Linde.
I would like to begin by thanking the WTO for inviting me to this
session on aid for trade and closing the gender gap. It’s a great
honor to be here!
When I attended the last Global Review in 2017 I called on the
WTO secretariat and WTO’s member states to put trade and
gender as the theme for next meeting in 2019.
I am therefore delighted that gender equality constitutes such a
large part of this Global Review meeting.
Now to your question. On the way to Geneva I was thinking that we have met and discussed trade and gender in many different locations and
events in the past years. From Geneva to Buenos Aires, and also
in my capital, at the Stockholm Forum on Gender Equality last
year. And it is fair to say that a lot of progress has been achieved in
the past years. I have noted the progress in many different
areas of trade policy and aid for trade. I will mention two areas for progress.
Firstly, progress has been made in the area of gender analysis
and gender disaggregated data. I usually take the opportunity to bring up this issue. I believe it is crucial for getting an accurate picture that will enable us to
formulate adequate responses. And I am glad that there has been a development during the last years.
It is for example very positive that the OECD now has gender
equality in its work program for the trade policy committee. A number of workshops have been held in Geneva to implement the commitments in the Buenos Aires Declaration on Women and Trade. The result – gathering of data and fostering best practices – will help us to take further steps for
gender equality.
Many other initiatives have also been launched, for example by the World Bank, UNCTAD, governments and the academia. To a large extent, we have the Buenos Aires Declaration to thank for this, whose main merit is that it has created a platform and a framework for dialogue on trade and gender
equality, which previously did not exist in the global trade policy
arena.
I am therefore particularly proud that I was part of the launch
of the Declaration in Buenos Aires in 2017. At the same time as we see all these initiatives, the Swedish National Board of Trade (the Swedish trade expert agency) has pointed at the fact that many of the data collection initiatives are ad hoc.
There is thus a great potential for development and
systematization. I therefore call upon all organisations in the
trade community, that haven’t already done so, to
systematically collect gender disaggregated data and include
gender in their analyses.
In the report, that will be published in the autumn this year,
they have also found that gender‐disaggregated data is mainly
available for gender gaps in the labour market, such as
employment participation rates and wages.
Consequently, data on entrepreneurship and consumption
should be prioritized in order for us to get the full picture.
The second area that I would like to mention and where there
has been a development is of course on Aid for Trade. For example, gender has a prominent place in the work programme on aid for trade. Last year, Sweden contributed with about 3.7 billion Swedish kronor (about 400 million USD) in trade‐related development cooperation. Swedish authorities and agencies must of course integrate gender into their work on distributing the development assistance.
To support this work, the Swedish Development Agency (Sida) has developed a gender tool box. The purpose is to operationalize gender equality in Swedish development cooperation.
When the National Board of Trade analyzed on going initiatives to promote gender equality and women’s economic empowerment, they found that unilateral measures has seen the most creative development in terms of including gender in trade policy.
Aid for Trade projects was identified as one example of unilateral strategies under which individual countries have started to move trade policy in a more gender responsive direction. The focus of many of these measures have been to eliminate barriers for women to access the opportunities from
participating in international trade, such as simplifying market
access for female entrepreneurs.
At the same time the OECD – in its report Aid for Trade at a
glance ‐ stated that that only a small part of gender marked aid
for trade is going to the category “Trade policy”. I was also surprised to read in the same report that few donors integrate gender perspectives in key Aid for Trade sectors, one of them the ICT sector.
This at a time when there is plenty of evidence to suggest that
digital access can help boost women’s development and wider
prosperity. OECD has found that around the world, some 250 million fewer
women than men are online. Many of them in developing countries.
The Women and the Web report by Intel found that enabling greater internet access in the developing world would contribute an estimated 13 to 18 billion dollars to annual GDP across 144 countries.
If the absence of integrating a gender perspective in the ICT sector is due to lack of guidelines, then we must start the work on setting up guidelines in this and other areas that are essential for contributing to women’s economic empowerment and achieving global goals and the 2030 Agenda. I am sure that the OECD Secretary General Gurria will elaborate more on this subject.
Thank you very much!