Look FIRST from a gender perspective: NAFTA and the FTAA

Overview

Advocates for gender and economic justice have been calling for gender and social-impact assessments of trade policies for the past seven years. In 2002, Women’s Edge Coalition completed a Trade Impact Review (TIR), an economic and legal framework to analyse the ways in which women and men may be differentially affected by global trade and investment agreements. In 2003, the TIR was used to evaluate how the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) helped or harmed poor women in Mexico. This paper briefly summarises the TIR, the results of the case study, and the Women’s Edge Coalition’s Look FIRST (Full Impact Review and Screening of Trade) campaign to require the US government to conduct such assessments before completing trade agreements.

This article is hosted by our co-publisher Taylor & Francis. For the full table of contents for this and previous issues of this journal, please visit the Gender and Development website.