• Fast Track is undemocratic. Congress is expected to consider giving the president Fast Track negotiating authority. Such authority would mean Congress only could vote up or down on trade agreements negotiated by President George W. Bush and could not amend them. President Bush does not need Fast Track in order to negotiate trade deals; the president already has the authority to negotiate with other governments. If Fast Track is passed, it would be impossible for women’s organizations to work with Congress to amend a trade agreement to improve women’s opportunities, protect basic rights to food, water, energy, health care and education or to send an agreement back to the negotiators to be modified.
• Fast Track does not reflect U.S. women’s views on trade. A March 28, 2000, poll by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland found a distinct gender gap on trade issues. Approximately 81 percent of women surveyed said they think they have a moral obligation to ensure workers who make the products they consume are not working under dangerous conditions. Only 67 percent of men who were surveyed said they had such an obligation. More than 80 percent of women responding to the survey think labor and environmental standards should be included in trade agreements, compared with 74 percent of male respondents.
• Trade agreements like NAFTA violate the rights of women workers. In Export Processing Zones (EPZs), women workers represent approximately 90 percent of the workforce and earn as little as 56 cents to 77 cents per hour for a workweek that often is 50 to 80 hours long. Women workers in many factories have reported physical abuse, sexual harassment and violence and mandatory pregnancy testing as a condition for employment. In Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, more than 200 women have been murdered, many of them on their way to and from their work in the EPZs. If trade policies make it cheaper and easier for corporations to move anywhere in the world and abuse workers’ rights without being penalized, women will find that employers have a new power to ignore their demands and violate their rights to organize a union, bargain collectively and work in a nondiscriminatory workplace.
• Privatization of services reduces women’s access to affordable education and health care. The privatization of public services already has reduced many women’s access to their basic needs. As providers of these services for their families, women have the most to lose when safeguards are attacked. Trade agreements that further reduce a government’s ability to subsidize health care, education, energy and water for its citizens will hurt women disproportionately. The privatization of basic services allows corporate profit to take precedence over women’s lives.
• Commercialization of agriculture creates financial hardship for women. Since NAFTA, women farmers have suffered from the increased role of agribusiness that has destabilized small and family farms. Domestic crop prices have dropped, consumer food prices have risen and the United States continues to eliminate agriculture safety-net programs for its farmers. The result is a dismantling of the family farm and financial instability for families. Farm debt and rural poverty have led to an increase in domestic violence. The combination also has led to an increase in female-headed households, with women carrying the burden of seeking other income-generating activities to maintain their families.
• Fast Track on the Right Track. Trade can be good and improve economic conditions for women if it addresses their needs and not just those of corporations. Fast Track gives too much priority to rushing through trade deals quickly when there is no hurry. Fair trade that improves the lives of women requires the active participation of women’s and other organizations to help ensure U.S. trade policies result in real gains for women worldwide.

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What Working Women Want in Trade Agreement

• Institute a democratic process, such as a committee to advise the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office on trade-related gender and development concerns similar to the Trade and Environment Policy Advisory Committee (TEPAC) and other advisory committees.
• Collect various data, such as disaggregated data between males and females, to form a statistical baseline for future analyses. Data also should be collected for the informal sector.
• Initiate gender and social development impact assessments, such as a study of how current trade agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the policies of the World Trade Organization (WTO) have affected women’s economic, social, cultural and human rights status in the United States and developing countries. The study also should assess how these agreements have affected social development in low-income countries. These studies should be completed before continuing further negotiations in the WTO and before initiating new bilateral trade agreements.
• Protect the rights of women workers through trade agreements that recognize the primacy of the economic, environmental, social and political rights of all people especially women, who often bear a disproportionate burden of corporate-led globalization. Trade agreements must ensure all workers freely can exercise their basic rights as laid out by the 1998 ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work: the right to organize and bargain collectively, to refuse forced labor, to reject child labor and to work free from discrimination. These rights must be included in trade agreements and covered by dispute resolution and enforcement mechanisms that are fair, reduce inequalities, encourage compliance and sanction violators directly.
• Provide development assistance for women by allocating a percentage of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)’s trade policy reform funds to provide technology training, retraining in value-added economic sectors and capacity-building for women in developing countries who have lost their livelihood as a result of trade liberalization.

What you can do

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