Mexico Case Study Complete: Poor women worse off after NAFTA

The Women’s Edge Coalition has completed its groundbreaking case study to
analyze the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and
future impact of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) on Mexico’s
poor farmers, with a particular emphasis on women.

The study was designed to test the Trade Impact Review, a tool developed by
the Coalition to help trade negotiators analyze the negative and positive
impacts of a trade agreement on the poor before signing it. The Trade
Impact Review can help negotiators prevent the negative consequences that
trade may have on the poor, and especially poor women.

The case study provides, for the first time, an accurate and quantifiable
picture of how NAFTA affected women differently from men, and shows that
the negative consequences of trade agreements often have an even greater
impact on poor women.

Effects of NAFTA on Women in Mexico:
* Poverty increased by 50 percent in female-headed households since the
implementation of NAFTA, as compared to a 5 percent decrease in poverty for
male-headed households.
* Women, more than men, benefited from non-traditional agricultural
jobs, gaining 83 percent of the new jobs created in the sector, but, for
the same job in the non-traditional agriculture sector, women make 25 to 30
percent less than men. This helps to explain why women gained more jobs in
this sector - they are cheaper labor.
* Of women farmers in Mexico, only three percent have more then 10 hectares of land, much less then men. Women make up the poorest of farmers in Mexico.

To read more about the Mexico Case Study, click on the following link:
http://www.womensedge.org/pages/referencematerials/reference_material.jsp?
id=178