The Gender and Trade Coalition (GTC) was officially launched in March 2019 at the 63rd UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW63), one year after it was initiated at a think meeting on the margins of CSW62. Speakers Michelle Maziwisa (African Women's Development and Communications Network), Cristina Palabay (Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development), Gita Sen (Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era), Ranja Sengupta (Third World Network), and Mariama Williams (The South Centre) historicised and introduced the coalition to an audience of over 100.
Gita Sen spoke to the legacy of the International Gender and Trade Network (IGTN), a coalition of feminist groups that mobilized in 1999 around some of the earliest analysis on the intersections of gender and trade. Mariama Williams noted much of this history has been eroded with the emerging interest of global institutions in gender. Organizations like the World Trade Organisation are adopting the language of gender equality to mask continued efforts to open and deregulate markets in the global South for Northern corporate capture. In contrast with the IGTN’s struggle to expand the global trade agenda to recognize gender, the GTC is in the position of fighting this instrumentalization of women’s rights as a tool for liberalization.
Convenors
