Global value chains have become a dominant feature of world trade and investment, but what opportunities and risks do they provide to women? This question was addressed at a side event jointly organized by UNCTAD and Finland on 17 March during the 60th session at the UN Commission on the Status of Women.

Global value chains (GVCs) can provide opportunities for the economic growth of participating countries, for companies to get access to new markets and upgrade technologically, and for women and men to get new jobs. However, to be beneficial, GVCs should lead, not only to economic but also to social upgrading. But this does not happen automatically.

Recalling the experiences of several countries that have been able to integrate into GVCs - Bangladesh, Brazil, Egypt, Kenya, Lesotho, Mauritius and others - participants highlighted the benefits of such participation, mainly in terms of the new job opportunities becoming available to both skilled relatively unskilled workers, including women.

H.E. Anne Lammila, Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues and Gender Equality of Finland, emphasized how the new jobs provided by GVCs have elevated many women in developing countries out of poverty and empowered them within their families and communities.

Conversely the debate also revealed a serious challenge: a so called “rush to the bottom”, where firms tend to ignore basic workers’ rights in order to be competitive within the value chains.

By looking at horticulture and agro-processing, the apparel and the ICT sectors, Mr. Joakim Reiter, Deputy Secretary-General of UNCTAD, stressed that GVCs open a window of opportunities for women empowerment. However, he also noted that there is still work to do to better profit from this opportunity.

There are examples where women working in value chains face similar constraints to those faced by women working in firms oriented towards the domestic markets: employment at the lower nodes of the chain, with limited opportunities for skills development and lower wages in comparison to men performing the same functions. He concluded by saying.

An even more worrisome development was presented by Ms. Sheba Tejani, Assistant Professor of Political Economy at the New School in New York.

She pointed out that as firms upgrade technologically and become able to produce goods that have more value addition, women risk being left behind since they often do not possess the skills needed for more technology-intensive production. The technological upgrading of firms that results from their participation in GVCs, may thus lead to women’s exclusion from the workforce.

Participants called for action to be taken to make GVCs a tool for economic and social upgrading, including by providing fairer employment opportunities to women, including:

 

• To ensure that basic ILO conventions on workers’ rights, freedom of association, and equal pay for equal work are respected in all countries.

• To ensure that trade and investment agreements, including the new mega-regional agreements such as the TPP, go through human rights and gender assessments to fully grasp their social implications.

 

Practical instruments, such as Aid for Trade, can also be used to facilitate women’s beneficial participation in value chains.

The event was the result of a long-standing collaboration between UNCTAD and Finland on gender-related issues. The partnership made it possible to develop a number of initiatives, for example the UNCTAD manual on trade and gender and the related online course, from which policy-makers, academicians and civil society advocates in developing countries are benefitting.