Why Gender Can No Longer Be Ignored in India’s Trade Policy

For much of the post-1991 period, India’s trade policy was designed with a clear economic logic: expand markets, boost competitiveness, and accelerate growth. Questions of social inclusion — including gender — were largely addressed elsewhere, through labour laws, welfare schemes, and social policy. That separation once seemed reasonable. Today, it is increasingly untenable.

In an economy where exports are expected to drive jobs and productivity, and where female labour-force participation remains among the lowest in the G20, trade policy cannot afford to treat gender as incidental. Evidence from India and across the Global South is unequivocal: trade affects women and men differently. Ignoring this does not make trade policy neutral; it makes it less effective.

The myth of gender-neutral trade

The global trading system, built around the rules of the World Trade Organization, was premised on formal neutrality. Trade rules apply uniformly to firms and countries, with distributional concerns assumed to lie outside trade’s remit. India broadly shared this worldview in its early WTO engagement, focusing on development space, agriculture, and North–South equity — not inequalities within the economy.

But neutrality has proved illusory. In India, women form a large share of employment in export-oriented sectors such as agriculture, apparel, textiles, leather, and segments of services. According to the Periodic Labour Force Survey, women account for over 60% of employment in apparel manufacturing and a substantial proportion of informal agricultural exports. Yet trade strategy has rarely acknowledged this reality.

Research now shows that trade outcomes are shaped by pre-existing inequalities — in access to land, finance, skills, technology, mobility, and time. Markets do not dissolve these constraints; they interact with them, often amplifying disadvantages. Trade policy, whether intentionally or not, operates within these social structures.

Where trade disadvantages women in India

The gendered effects of trade in India emerge through multiple channels. Women are concentrated in sectors that face higher trade barriers and intense global competition. Agriculture and food exports confront stringent sanitary and phytosanitary standards. Textiles and garments face tariff escalation in developed markets. Leather exports encounter sustainability and compliance hurdles.

These barriers limit firms’ ability to upgrade, trapping production in low-value segments. The apparel sector illustrates this clearly. While it employs millions of women, most remain confined to low-skill, labour-intensive roles. Higher-value functions — design, branding, logistics, and management — remain male-dominated. Employment expands, but mobility does not.

Non-tariff measures compound these problems. Certification requirements, customs procedures, and compliance costs impose fixed burdens that disproportionately affect micro and small enterprises, where women are over-represented as entrepreneurs. With over 95% of women-owned enterprises operating at micro scale in India, even small frictions at the border can be decisive.

Where trade has helped — and why that is not enough

At the same time, trade has been one of the most powerful engines of women’s paid employment in the developing world. Exporting firms consistently employ a higher share of women than non-exporters. Global value chains have generated formal jobs for women in garments, electronics assembly, agri-processing, and IT-enabled services — often offering better wages and conditions than informal domestic work.

India, however, presents a paradox. Despite export growth, female labour-force participation fell sharply from the mid-2000s to around 2019, with only a modest recovery since. This reflects deeper structural constraints — unpaid care burdens, skill mismatches, safety concerns, and restrictive social norms — that trade alone cannot resolve.

The real challenge: value capture, not just jobs

The deeper issue is not employment alone, but value. Women contribute a large share of labour embodied in India’s exports, yet capture a disproportionately small share of domestic value added. They remain clustered in low-wage tasks, while men dominate higher-value roles involving capital, technology, and decision-making.

This is not only an equity problem; it is an economic one. Evidence from Indian manufacturing and services exports shows that technological upgrading raises productivity but also demands new skills — access to which women are less likely to have. Without deliberate intervention, global value chains risk becoming traps rather than ladders.

An economy that systematically underutilises half its talent cannot sustain productivity growth or move decisively up the value chain.

What a gender-aware trade strategy looks like

The solution is not to turn trade policy into social policy, but to align it with labour-market realities. Export strategies must be complemented by domestic investments — in skills, childcare infrastructure, safe transport, access to finance, and workplace standards — so that women can progress within global markets rather than stagnate.

Reducing asymmetric trade costs is equally critical. Simplifying customs procedures, digitising border processes, improving transparency, and easing access to trade finance can have powerful gender-equalising effects without altering tariff schedules. In India’s MSME-dominated export base, such reforms could unlock substantial gains.

Trade policy can also quietly improve job quality by encouraging upgrading rather than pure cost competition. Evidence from apparel and electronics suggests that better technology and logistics reduce informality and physical intensity, making factory employment more accessible to women.

Why trade policy must catch up with India’s reality

The debate on whether trade affects women differently is settled. The real question is whether India is willing to design trade policy for the economy it actually has.

A trade strategy that ignores gender will underperform — on exports, employment, and productivity. A strategy that integrates gender considerations will be more competitive, more resilient, and more legitimate. Inclusive trade is not a moral indulgence; it is an economic necessity — and one that India can no longer afford to postpone.