Trade policy

This chapter describes the mainstream literature on trade and gender, highlighting the tensions which European union (EU) trade policy has failed to fully address. It focuses on gender in EU trade policy. It charts the shift from implicit inclusion of gender to incipient explicit gender specificity in EU trade policy and trade agreements, and demonstrates a significant impact of the World Trade Organization (WTO’s) recent attention to gender on the EU’s approach. The chapter discusses the shape, and possible implications, of proposed gender clauses in new EU trade agreements, with special attention to the modernised preferential trade agreements (PTA) with Chile since this contains the first Trade and Gender chapter. It argues that the explicit inclusion of gender in EU PTAs is based on international developments, and that its focus on women as economic actors precludes a fully transformational agenda.