high-income countries. However, while Latin American countries continued to experience rising female intensity of employment, most Southeast Asian and Pacific countries experienced a “defeminization” of employment. Given that both regions were involved in important liberalization policies, the authors conclude that changes on export orientation do not seem to be the only explanation of trends in female intensity. They suggest that initial low levels of female intensity and slower industrial upgrading explain the increase in female employment participation in manufacturing in Latin America, while initial high levels of female intensity and a dramatic industrial upgrading experienced in Southeast Asia explains the defeminization of manufacturing labor in that region.

Thus, empirical evidence on the impact of trade liberalization on gender inequality seems ambiguous, suggesting both positive and negative effects of trade liberalization on women in both developed and developing countries. While some studies find that women tend to benefit from trade as labor-intensive sectors such as garments, basic manufactures, and tourism sectors expand, there are other studies that find that women in agriculture in foodimporting developing countries may be harmed by trade reforms that allow the influx of cheaper food imports. The impact of trade reform on men and women employed in different sectors and regions will depend on many factors including the modalities of the trade reforms, labor markets institutions, resource endowments, and sectoral gender intensities. However, none of the studies has done cross-country comparison of the impacts on trade liberalization on female participation in the labor force and their wages using CGE.

One can conclude that while trade policy may by itself be gender neutral, the impact of trade policy on underlying gender relations is significant. Moreover, while gender equality is an end in itself, it is also a means to achieve poverty reduction, economic growth and export expansion. Therefore, there is need for a much more in-depth examination of the gender impact of trade policy.

2.2 Female Labor Force Participation and the Gender Wage Gap in South Asia This section examines the differentials in female labor force participation rates as well as the extent of the gender wage gap (women’s wages relative to men’s wages) across different sectors/economic activities for the economies of South Asia.

The Global Gender Gap Report (2020)<sup>8</sup> has ranked South Asia as the second-lowest scoring region with an average remaining gender gap of 34 percent, ahead only of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region with the lowest performance (having an average remaining gender gap of 39 percent). Bangladesh is the best performer in the region and only one of the seven South Asian countries studied to feature in the top 100 of the Global Gender Gap Index, ahead of Nepal (101st) and Sri Lanka (102nd), and some 60 places ahead of India (112th). Furthermore, UN Women<sup>9</sup> reports that South Asia has the world’s

> 8 World Economic Forum. Global Gender Gap Report 2020, Geneva, 2019 available at

> - - - - <u>http://reports.weforum.org/global gender gap report 2020/dataexplorer.</u> 9 United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women). Progress of the World’s Women 2015-2016: Transforming economies, realizing rights, 2016.

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