Emmanuelle Ganne, Chief of Digital Trade and Frontier Technologies of WTO spoke to CGTN Europe, discussing the persistent barriers facing women-led businesses in international trade, such as structural challenges, limited access to financing, and legal impediments.
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00:00The theme of this year's International Women's Day is accelerated action with a call to speed up steps towards gender equality.
00:09Currently it's estimated it will take until 2158 to reach full gender parity.
00:15Robin Dwyer spoke to Emmanuelle Gann, Chief of Digital Trade and Frontier Technologies at the World Trade Organization.
00:23Yes, let me talk about achieving progress more in respect to international trade because I work at the World Trade Organization
00:30and a number of small companies and companies are led by women.
00:35And what we see is that despite progress in promoting gender inclusion in trade, there are still significant barriers that persist.
00:43Women-led businesses are largely underrepresented in international trade.
00:48And it's estimated that they comprise about only 15% of exporting firms globally.
00:53And there are a number of reasons for this.
00:56Some structural challenges like the fact that women-owned enterprises often operate in less traded sectors like services.
01:04Very often they are smaller in size.
01:07They also have limited access to financing due to lack of collateral.
01:13It can be that the assets are in the name of men because they have a shorter credit history.
01:18And so these different factors hinder the capacity to engage in export activities.
01:24And what we see as well is that there are a number of legal impediments that further exacerbate the issue.
01:33There was the publication of a Women Business and Law 2024 Index that showed that there are more than 500 legal barriers in 145 economies
01:43that restrict women's participation in export-related activities.
01:47And this can include constraints on signing contracts, registering businesses, or unequal property rights.
01:54So we've seen some progress, but there are still a number of structural and legal barriers that make it difficult to achieve true gender parity in global trade.
02:07So we're not there yet. There's still some work to do, but some progress nevertheless.
02:13What would you like to see then? What do you think could help improve seeing more women working within trade?
02:23So there are a number of actions that we've been advocating for.
02:29The first one is to integrate gender considerations into trade policies.
02:34So to apply a gender lens or to apply what we call a misogyny lens or a small business lens.
02:41Many small businesses are led by women.
02:44So making sure that the needs of women-led companies and small companies are taken into account when new regulations are being developed.
02:53It's also very important to enhance collection on gender-desegregated data because accurate data is crucial for informed policymaking.
03:03And we're still struggling. There has been some progress being made.
03:06But having better data on small companies' participation in international trade, and in particular those led by women, is critically important.