Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is the Director General of the WTO<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nGlobal trade has been, and remains, a powerful instrument for improving the lives of girls and women around the world, and especially for those in poor countries, Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has said during the 18th Rafael M. Salas Memorial Lecture hosted by the United Nations Population Fund in New York.<\/p>\n
Empowering women economically through decent jobs and trade can lead to increased global development and economic growth, DG Okonjo-Iweala said. Trade creates jobs and market opportunities for women and the businesses they run and serves as a driver of economy-wide growth in the countries that most urgently need it, she added.<\/p>\n
But \u201cwe have left much of this power unharnessed,\u201d she noted. \u201cWe can do so much more to leverage trade to create economic opportunities for women.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Director-General pointed to an International Monetary Fund study estimating that closing the gender gap in the labour markets of many developing countries could raise GDP by as much as 35 per cent.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe key takeaway is clear: the opportunity costs of gender inequality in the labour market \u2014 the economic gains we choose to forego by allowing those inequalities to persist \u2014 are immense,\u201d she declared. \u201cThey are in the same ballpark as the economic damage from the COVID-19 pandemic.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Director-General noted a\u00a0recent joint study on trade and gender equality\u00a0by the WTO and World Bank which found that trade generates more and better jobs and job opportunities for women. Companies that export employ more women, and firms integrated into global trade and global value chains have a higher average female labour share than those focused on the domestic market.<\/p>\n
To truly maximize trade\u2019s contribution to improving the lives of women and girls, however, \u201cwe have to tackle the reality that many poor countries have been left out of the gains from trade and globalization these past few decades,\u201d the Director-General said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe current re-think on supply chain resilience in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine creates a window of opportunity to bring these poor countries from the margins of the global economy to the mainstream,\u201d she declared. \u201cExpanding this process of what I call \u2018re-globalization\u2019 would accomplish objectives that \u2018de-globalization\u2019 cannot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Source: 3news.com|Ghana<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is the Director General of the WTO Global trade has been, and remains, a powerful instrument for improving the lives of girls and women around the world, and especially for those in poor countries, Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has said during the 18th Rafael M. Salas Memorial […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1211154,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[566,6128,2346,5268,1715,7807,915,427,7033],"class_list":["post-1211153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-boss","tag-global","tag-improving","tag-instrument","tag-lives","tag-powerful","tag-trade","tag-women","tag-wto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1211153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1211153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1211153\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1211153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1211153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1211153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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