Achieving SDG 5, gender equality and empower all women and girls, in developing countries: how aid for trade can help?
International Journal of Social Economics
ISSN: 0306-8293
Article publication date: 2 March 2022
Issue publication date: 12 May 2022
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to investigate whether aggregate and sectoral disbursement of aid for trade (AfT) facilitates achieving gender equality and women empowerment in aid-recipient developing countries for the period 2005–2019.
Design/methodology/approach
The study develops static and dynamic panel data and empirical specifications and employs fixed effects and generalised method of moments (GMM) estimation techniques to estimate the impact of aggregate AfT and different categories of AfT on women empowerment. The study uses the Gender Inequality Index (GII) and Global Gender Gap Index (GGI) as the proxy measures of SDG-5, where the higher (lower) value of GII (GGI) implies higher gender disparities and lower women empowerment, and vice versa.
Findings
The study finds that aggregate AfT and aid disbursement for the development of economic infrastructure, productive capability building and trade policy and regulations contribute significantly to achieve women empowerment by reducing gender inequalities concerning the labour force and political participation, education enrolment and better healthcare and by increasing gender gap index in relation to economic participation, educational attainment, health and survival and political empowerment. The impact of aggregate AfT and its different categories is found significant only in low- and lower-middle-income developing countries. The findings also indicate that the impact of AfT is not noticeably different across different regions of the world as well as the religious belief of the developing countries.
Practical implications
The study recommends that more allocation of gender-responsive AfT, whether aggregated or disaggregated, significantly helps women empowerment and assists developing economies to achieve SDG-5.
Originality/value
This study is one of the few that investigate the impact of aggregate AfT on gender inequality and women empowerment. This is the foremost study that examines the effects of each individual category of AfT on women empowerment vis-à-vis SDG-5.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Funding: The authors received no fund for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
The authors would like to thank anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions.
Citation
Roy, C.K. and Xiaoling, H. (2022), "Achieving SDG 5, gender equality and empower all women and girls, in developing countries: how aid for trade can help?", International Journal of Social Economics, Vol. 49 No. 6, pp. 930-959. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSE-12-2020-0813
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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