Abstract
The role of international trade in women’s empowerment has been magnified in the past decade as a result of the proliferation of regional and international trade agreements. The various international trade agreements have triggered tensions over tariffs and non-tariff barriers in an attempt to achieve inclusive economic and social development. The thesis focuses on the study of gender and regional integration in free trade areas in Southern African, with the emphasis on women in informal cross-border trading. It sought to understand the challenges faced by women involved in informal cross-border trading and ways that could be adopted to redress these challenges. The nexus between gender and regional integration was explored with the intention to find the common ground to ensure that the efforts to have international trade address social and economic development as articulated in the Sustainable Development Goals do not neglect gender equality. The concept of developmental feminism was introduced in the thesis to assist in generating gender-sensitive and gender-responsive trade policies that can assist in addressing the challenges faced by women as they trade across the borders. Developmental feminism is anchored in the need to include women in the designing, formulating, and implementing regional trade policies to enhance the eradication of challenges they face under regional trade agreements (RTAs). Marxism, postmodernism and African feminism were all utilised to cement the important role of gender in regional trade policies. The study used both quantitative and qualitative methods in collecting and analysing data. The areas of interest were the challenges faced by women in cross-border trading and the failures of regional trade policies in meeting their needs. The main observations were the lack of gender-differentiated data and inadequate capacity by both regional and national trade institutions to integrate the needs of women under existing regional trade policies. The thesis concludes by proposing how future and existing regional trade policies can be reformed to be gender responsive and gender sensitive and contribute to resolving the challenges faced by women in informal cross-border training (WICBT) under RTAs.
D.Litt. et Phil. (Political Studies)