GENDER IMPLICATIONS OF NEPAL’S WTO MEMBERSHIP

Shiv Raj Bhatt () and Bhattarai Ekta
Additional contact information
Bhattarai Ekta: Trade Capacity Building Project, UNDP Nepal

International Trade from EconWPA

Abstract: Despite significant achievements in the socio-economic front in past decades under planned development efforts, women’s status is still far behind of men. In fact, the development that took place in the country, which largely failed to address the problem of gender inequality, resulted in low women’s participation in the development process, representation in decision-making, and ownership in productive resources. Nepal acceded to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2004. As an instrument of trade liberalization it can significantly affect the lives of people, including women. Economists working on gender and trade investigating the complex relationship between gender inequalities and trade liberalization find that trade liberalization has had mixed results for gender outcomes. Socio-economic conditions, institutional arrangements, access over productive resources and many other factors largely determine whether and to what extent a country or a particular group of people benefits from trade. Therefore, Nepal’s entry into the WTO may also produce mixed results for gender outcome, especially in existence of widespread gender discriminations in economic life. In a situation of large socio-economic differences between men and women, Nepal needs active policy interventions to expand human choices and to contribute to increasing income and gender inequalities, especially after WTO membership. Therefore, it is imperative to implement active policy interventions rather than passively wait for the markets to deliver automatic benefits if the opportunities of WTO membership are to be translated into tangible, widespread, long lasting and equitable benefits for Nepalese women.

JEL-codes: F1 F2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int
Date: 2005-11-27
Note: Type of Document - doc; pages: 19
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations Track citations by RSS feed

Downloads: (external link)
http://128.118.178.162/eps/it/papers/0511/0511015.doc (application/msword)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wpa:wuwpit:0511015

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in International Trade from EconWPA
Series data maintained by EconWPA ().