“Grasping the fruits of agricultural trade liberalization: opportunities and challenges for Women”

Dr. David LabordeSenior Research Fellow, IFPRIMTID Division

with contributions from Dr. Kelly Jones and Tess Lallemant

Presentation made during the “International value chains in agriculture: challenges and opportunities to address gender inequalities” session at the WTO PUBLIC FORUM 2016

Setting the stage• Research on Gender, Value Chains and Trade: the need of good data

• Understanding biases

Ex-ante vs Ex-post

De jure vs De facto

• Discriminate between Market failures vs Policy failures

Is the “Invisible Hand” biased?

Could we correct this bias with the right policies?

• Capturing the complexity of the agricultural value chains: different products involved, different roles in the VC for women

• Facing the same global situation, different outcomes due to different environment socio-economic environments

International trade and gender biasesRole of women in agriculture

value chains

Specific contribution of International Trade and

trade policies

Primary producers

• Participation to production

• Control of production

Crop specialization

• Cash crops (export oriented)

• Food crops (domestic markets, import competing)

• Livestocks

Processing stage

• Industrial processing

Female vs male labour specificities

• Increased linkages to rich markets

• International VC specialization (shrimps,

horticulture)

• Pros: Formal sector, Cons: additional workload if no

behavioral adjustment

Trading and Marketing stage

• Services (food distribution) and

local markets

Role of imports

• Inputs, including basic food products (e.g. Tanzania

and sugar)

Consumers Affordable and diversified source of food

Gender Inequalities at the production stage: Consequences and Origins• Large share of the agricultural labor force in developing

countries provided by women (on average 43%, 50% in Africa)

• Still women are disadvantaged:

in productive asset ownership

control of productive inputs

Nature of extension services (e.g. male providers and female farmers)

• Consequences: in average, lower productivity for women farmers due lower access to inputs and human capital

• Less policy support?

Lower political capital

Access to import licenses

• Intra-household dynamics (see Jones and al. for ongoing research in Uganda and Ghana) :

Increased commercialization and move towards cash crops due to shifts in intra-household allocation (while women often participate in cash crop production, it is almost exclusively men who are responsible for sales and profit allocation)

Role of redistributing “rights” by allocating contracts to man or woman

How to make international trade more inclusive?How to increase women’s participation to international trade?

• Specific barriers to trade

Fixed cost to trade

• Scale matters

Quantity, homogenous quality

See Dr. Bernard’s presentation

• Productivity matters

Farmer heterogeneity, productivity and participation

Role of Trade Facilitation

How to increase women’s payoff from international trade?

• Specific role in VC

• Could we generate gender “premium”? The role of specific labels?

See Dr. Minten’s presentation

• Two caveats

Address domestic bottlenecks and local constraints

Price response vs behavorial changes

Women’s empowerment index in Agriculture

• Check

Based on Ruth Meinzen-Dick, Agnes Quisumbing, Farzana Ramzan,

Emily Hogue, and Sabina Alkire

Check http://www.ifpri.org/topic/weai-resource-

center

Women’s empowerment index in Agriculture (decomposition)

Farm and Trade Policies impacts

• Understand the policy effects on Output prices

Input prices and access (e.g. fertilizers vouchers)

Price of assets (land, herds)

income vs wealth effects

• Domestic vs International Distortions

• Role of product specialization

• Illustration with Uganda: balanced environment, balanced outcomes

Price distortions and gender inequalities

Author’s computation

based on Ag-Incentives

Consortium data, and

Uganda LSMS survey

Domestic vs International Distortions (I)

Author’s computation

based on Ag-Incentives

Consortium data, and

Uganda LSMS survey

Domestic vs International Distortions (II)

Author’s computation

based on Ag-Incentives

Consortium data, and

Uganda LSMS survey

Concluding Remarks• Addressing gender inequalities in agricultural value chains are important

due to:

Economic outcomes

Social outcomes

Environmental outcomes

• Gender inequalities will not be solved in Geneva, Still:

International negotiations should aim to control for ex-post biases

Discipline on policy space should control for gender biases

Role of trade facilitation

• Understanding domestic constraints are critical

No uniform “silver” bullet

Price incentives and/or distortions have limited impacts without behavioral changes