The workshops will focus on education on international women's issues, training on advocacy techniques, and presenting them with networking opportunities. Unlike free trade in goods, trade in services poses some vexing problems for negotiators. While a good can be seen, heard, touched, or tasted, a service is more amorphous. Other countries prefer a more limited definition of services. The U.S., which has many service providers, prefers a broader approach since that would allow U.S. corporations to compete in other countries to provide health care, education, water, and energy.
Services are important for women in developing countries.
Women workers are concentrated in the service sector, as clerks, cashiers, teachers, nurses, and administrators. As public sector agencies begin to privatize, women workers are invariably the first fired. Concurrently, privatization policies may lead the government to impose user fees on families that obtain government health care or education. Women's EDGE has asked the USTR to ensure that health care, education, and water continue to be universally affordable and accessible. Data entry jobs are a part of the service sector that has moved to the Caribbean and Asia.