Women and access to finance: What is the role (if any) of trade policy?

Discrimination based on gender or marital status is yet to be prohibited in areas relevant to women’s use of financial services in many countries. Firm-level data show that women-owned and -run firms differ significantly from other firms in terms of their ability to access financial services, and the conditions upon which such services are supplied. Although the direction of causation needs to be established by careful empirical work, the data suggest significant links between trade, finance, and gender. From a policy perspective, moving forward in this area requires a consideration of the ways in which exchanges of market access concessions in trade agreements is inherently gendered. As in other areas of economic and social life, women face significant barriers in accessing financial services. The World Bank’s Women, Business, and The Law Database (WBL) shows that in all regions, a significant proportion of countries do not prohibit discrimination based on gender or marital status in access to credit (Figure 1). The failure to prohibit this behaviour means that traditional cultural attitudes can be given full sway in a way that has historically been detrimental to women’s ability to start and run businesses that require credit, as most businesses do at some...

Written by Ben Shepherd