8
The APEC Gender Integration Framework
The adoption and implementation of APEC’s Gender Integration Framework is a
significant example of how the technical is political. It illustrates the potentially far-
reaching nature of institutional change in regional governance. But is APEC’s agenda
for trade and investment liberalization gender-sensitive or does it have an adverse
impact on women? Are the sectors most severely affected by liberalization (especially
in the aftermath of the Asian Financial Crisis) also those which employ
predominantly women workers? In 1998 Heather Gibb, a consultant from the
Canadian North-South Institute seconded to APEC, judged that APEC did not have
the capacity to undertake the analysis that could address these and other gender equity
related questions.
At the recommendation of the 1998 First Ministerial Meeting on Women held in the
Philippines, a Gender Integration Framework (GIF) designed to address such
questions was developed by the Ad Hoc Task Force for the Integration of Women in
APEC. Ministers endorsed this Framework in 1999. The institution-wide Framework
is three-pronged, comprised of gender analysis; collection and use of sex-
disaggregated data; and the participation of women in APEC Fora. Gender analysis is
conceived as a methodology for examining trade and economic policy a gender-
differentiated perspective to ensure that trade benefits everyone. At the Second
Ministerial Meeting on Women held in Mexico in 2002, Ministers stated:
We recognize that in some sectors women may bear a disproportionate share
of the costs of trade liberalization, in addition to exacerbating existing gender
inequalities. These differences must be taken into account when policies and
programmes are being designed to ensure that trade liberalization contributes
to shared prosperity.
The collection and use of sex disaggregated data makes it possible to describe the
economic activity of women and men, important for identifying and addressing the
barriers to economic participation. Women’s participation in APEC is intended to
Convention