Do Working-Class Women in the Arab Region Benefit from Trade Liberalisation? Looking at the Export-Oriented Garment Industry in Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia

Over the last decades, trade liberalisation has been extensively promoted by international agencies and actors around the world, including the Arab region, based on the assumption that it would contribute to promoting growth, jobs, development, democracy and even gender equality. The aim of this article is to rebalance such over-optimistic narratives about trade, taking as a starting point its concrete effects on the working conditions and lives of women workers in the export-oriented garment industry in Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia. Drawing on feminist political economy research and labour studies, the first part of the paper sets out the context in which to understand the impact of trade liberalisation on working-class women by problematising the dominant narrative and presenting the analytical framework that will be used. The second section reviews the empirical evidence documenting how the expansion of garment exports in the three countries has relied entirely on the recruitment of the most powerless women, under precarious and indecent working conditions. The third section examines the trajectories through which trade liberalisation has led to the observed pattern of female exploitation. Using the analytical framework discussed in the first section, it will look at the interplay between the specific structure of the Global Supply Chain in which the three countries are integrated, state policies and existing gendered social relations.