Trade Agreements and Women: Transcending Barriers

With more and more countries including provisions on women's concerns in their trade agreements, Trade Agreements and Women: Transcending Barriers explores how women's empowerment and trade liberalization interact, overlap, and converge. Tapping into examples from across the globe, and taking into consideration the diverse political, economic, social, and legal contexts of different countries, Amrita Bari poses and answers some key questions: What role can trade agreements play with regard to women's empowerment, and what limitations do they have? Have previous efforts to include women through trade agreements been genuinely responsive to the needs of women, or have they been merely symbolic? What, ultimately, makes a trade agreement responsive to the needs of women, and how can countries achieve this in their own trade agreements?

In answering these questions, Bahri carves out a roadmap, with concrete recommendations, for the future of women-related trade provisions, and offers much-needed guidance for legal scholars, trade negotiators, and policymakers involved in preparing, revising, and inclusively negotiating trade regulations.