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.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by EconWPA in its series International Trade with number
0511015.
Length: 19 pages Date of creation: 27 Nov 2005 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:wpa:wuwpit:0511015
Note: Type of Document - doc; pages: 19 Contact details of provider: Web page: http://129.3.20.41
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (EconWPA).
Related research
Keywords:
Find related papers by JEL classification: F1 - International Economics - - Trade F2 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports: