India-EU trade deal and the gender blind spot in India's trade policy

India-EU FTA has concluded on the 27th of January 2026. Union Minister of Commerce and Industry, Mr. Piyush Goyal, and the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, called it the “Mother of all deals”. But do our women feature in these trade deals?

For long, trade, globalisation and Free Trade Agreement (FTA) were formulated under the assumption of gender neutrality despite the deeply gendered nature of labour markets, enterprise structures, and access to productive resources—particularly in developing countries.

With India signing significant FTAs in the recent past, it is worthwhile to assess the gender-trade nexus in labour markets, Global Value Chains (GVCs) and the role of international organisations in facilitating gender-responsive trade policies."

WHY GENDER MATTERS IN TRADE?

Since the late twentieth century, trade liberalisation has been a central pillar of development strategy in India and much of the Global South. In policy discourse, trade has often been treated as a largely technical instrument—concerned with tariffs, market access, and competitiveness—whose social effects would be addressed indirectly through growth.

Yet this approach has consistently overlooked one of the most salient features of developing-country economies: their deeply gendered structure. Women and men participate in markets from markedly unequal starting points.

Women face systematic disadvantages in access to land, credit, skills, technology, time, mobility, and market information. They are disproportionately concentrated in informal employment, unpaid family work, and low-productivity activities, while remaining underrepresented in firm ownership, exporting, and senior decision-making roles.

These asymmetries are particularly pronounced in India, where female labour-force participation remains low despite decades of economic integration.

As a result, trade policy interventions—whether tariff reforms, regulatory changes, or trade facilitation measures—do not operate on neutral economic agents. Instead, they interact with pre-existing gender norms, labour-market segmentation, and institutional biases.

The distributional consequences of trade, therefore, depend not only on sectoral outcomes but also on who is able to enter, remain, and progress within tradable activities.

GENDERED NATURE OF TARIFF

One of the clearest ways in which trade policy affects women differently is through the structure of tariffs. Tariff structures in developing countries often reflect historical protection patterns that inadvertently penalise women-intensive sectors.

In India, agriculture, textiles, apparel, leather, and food processing employ a large share of women, particularly in informal and small-scale units. These sectors often face higher tariffs, both in export markets and on imported inputs.

For example, India's textile and apparel sector—one of the country's largest employers of women—faces higher tariffs in key export destinations compared to sectors dominated by capital-intensive manufacturing. Tariff escalation in textiles and apparel penalizes value addition in developing countries, limiting income gains for female workers.

As a result, tariffs—often perceived as neutral instruments—can have distinctly gendered effects, reinforcing existing inequalities in market participation. These structural features reduce the potential gains from trade liberalisation for women producers.

Non-tariff measures (NTMs) pose even greater challenges for women in the Global South. Compliance with standards, certification requirements, and customs procedures involves fixed costs that are particularly burdensome for women-led micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs).

In India, where women own a small fraction of registered enterprises, these barriers contribute to low female participation in export markets. .

WOMEN IN TRADE: AGRICULTURE AND INDUSTRY

In regions practising labour-intensive agriculture, especially the Global South, women are the primary workers. Agrarian drudgery for women doubles down as unpaid farm work and invisiblisation of labour, preventing upward or outward mobility in the field.

With trade, subsistence female farmers are exposed to intense competition from foreign capital-intensive agrarian systems. This increases their vulnerability and pushes them further away from realising gains from trade.

Although employment insecurity affects both male and female workers, women—who are disproportionately represented in unstable forms of employment—derive fewer benefits from the expansion of agricultural trade than men.

Export-oriented agricultural industries often fail to provide women with decent and secure working conditions. In India, export-oriented industry sectors, increased competition through trade liberalisation also translates to wage cuts and the immiseration of vulnerable labour, including women.

Global value chains (GVCs) have played a crucial role in this process by linking domestic firms to international markets and standards. GVCs present both opportunities and risks for women in developing countries.

These jobs often offer higher wages, greater stability, and better working conditions than informal domestic employment. GVCs can also act as conduits for technology transfer, skills development, and formalisation .

However, GVCs can entrench gender hierarchies if women remain confined to the lowest segments. Upgrading within value chains may bypass women altogether, reinforcing rather than reducing inequality without complementary policies.

Women often remain confined to lower tiers of value chains, even as firms move into higher value-added activities. This highlights that GVC upgrading does not automatically translate into gender upgrading.

Women’s unequal access to upskilling opportunities hindered their successful transition to high-paying and secure job opportunities that came with trade liberalisation.

The pervasive pattern of resource distribution indicates that women are allotted only residual and peripheral resources, signifying that their development is not a central objective.

On the other hand, the working conditions in their traditional occupations, like agriculture and small-scale industries, have become even more precarious due to resource diversion and enhanced competition from international players.

Exporting firms generally employ a significantly higher share of women than non-exporters, with estimates suggesting women account for around 33% of employment in exporting firms compared to 24% in non-exporting firms.

These jobs empower women by increasing their ownership of resources, providing them with viable alternatives, and securing their position in the household. Increased employment opportunities can have a positive externality in the form of increased investment in education, health, and the development of current and future generations of women.

Ultimately, gender-responsive trade is not a peripheral or normative add-on to the trading system. It is a condition for sustainable, politically legitimate, and development-oriented globalisation. Integrating gender considerations into trade policy design, implementation, and evaluation is therefore essential—not only to ensure that trade works for women, but to ensure that trade works better overall.

For India, gender-responsive trade policy should be seen as part of a broader development transition. Enhancing women’s participation as workers, entrepreneurs, and exporters is not only a matter of equity but also of competitiveness and resilience. Economies that fail to fully utilise female talent incur significant productivity losses, especially in an era of global uncertainty and slowing trade growth.