Presentation by David Laborde, Senior Research Fellow, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) at the WTO Public Forum 2016.

1. “Grasping the fruits of agricultural trade
liberalization: opportunities and challenges for
Women”
Dr. David Laborde
Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI
MTID 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

2. 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

3. International trade and gender biases
Role 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. Women’s empowerment index in
Agriculture (decomposition)

8. 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

9. Price distortions and gender
inequalities
Author’s computation
based on Ag-Incentives
Consortium data, and
Uganda LSMS survey

10. Domestic vs International
Distortions (I)
Author’s computation
based on Ag-Incentives
Consortium data, and
Uganda LSMS survey

11. Domestic vs International
Distortions (II)
Author’s computation
based on Ag-Incentives
Consortium data, and
Uganda LSMS survey

12. 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