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ABSTRACT
This paper seeks to explore the prospects for women’s economic empowerment in the Indian Ocean region, bringing a feminist global governance perspective to the priority Trade and Investment Facilitation and Tourism areas of the Indian Ocean Rim Association’s (IORA) work. Why would investing in women’s economic empowerment bring benefits to 1 billion women living in the IORA region, and how could such investment also benefit 21 IORA economies? Part I outlines the links between women’s economic empowerment and overall sustainable macroeconomic growth that reduces inequality. Part II sets out some of the ideas that have been developed in other governance fora, or through international organizations. Part III notes some challenges IORA’s leadership may face in pursuing this agenda. I argue that this is an area of great opportunity for IORA, and a test of whether the organization is capable of setting governance and regulatory standards expected of modern regional organizations. Further, this article argues that women are disadvantaged in international trade with a particular focus on Indian Ocean region. Trade governance that gives more precedence to women’s rights recognizes women’s participation in informal trade and seeks to formalize that participation should be core to the enterprise of IORA.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
ORCID
Susan Harris Rimmer http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6455-9546
Notes on contributor
Susan Harris Rimmer (BA[Hons]/LLB[Hons] UQ, University Medal, SJD ANU) is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow appointed as Associate Professor to Griffith University Law School in July 2015. She remains an Adjunct Reader at the Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy at the Australian National University. She is also a Research Associate at the Development Policy Centre in the Crawford School. Sue was appointed an Associate Fellow, International Economics at UK think-tank Chatham House (the Royal Institute of International Affairs) in December 2015. She will be a Visiting Fellow at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, Switzerland in Fall 2016, and a Visiting Fellow to the International Gender Studies Programme at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University, UK, for Michaelmas term 2016. Susan is an expert in women's rights and international law, and has a track record in influencing government to adopt progressive policy ideas, including the creation of the position of the Global Ambassador for Women and Girls, support for the W20 in Turkey, and the C20 in Australia (civil society grouping giving policy advice to the G20). She was part of the Think20 process for Australia's host year of the Group of 20 Leaders' Summit in Brisbane 2014, Turkey 2015 and China 2016 and is Australia’s representative to the W20, with Anne Fulwood for the Xi’an and Berlin W20 Summits. In 2014 she was named one of the Westpac and Australian Financial Review's 100 Women of Influence in the Global category. In 2014, Susan was awarded a prestigious Australian Research Council Future Fellow for her project ‘Are We Trading Women's Rights in Transitions?’ to examine the role of gender in diplomatic negotiations for the next four years. She is the author of Gender and transitional justice: The women of East Timor (Routledge 2010) and over 30 academic works. She has given invited papers at Harvard, Oxford, SOAS, Trinity College Dublin, Georgetown, National University of Singapore, Lingnan University Hong Kong, University of Yangon Myanmar, Graduate Institute Geneva, Renmin University of China, Beijing, and Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey. Susan was selected as an expert for the official Australian delegation to the 58th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women in New York in March 2014, with the delegation headed by Minister Michaelia Cash and Ambassador for Women and Girls, Natasha Stott-Despoja. She was a keynote speaker and author of the policy brief for the inaugural Indian Ocean Rim Association Dialogue Event on Paths to Women's Economic Empowerment in Malaysia, August 2014. She is often called upon to give executive education and policy advice to the Australian Public Service, and provides women’s leadership training internationally.
Notes
* The author was a participant at the IORA Dialogue Event held in Kuala Lumpur from 18 to 20 August 2014. The author is also a member of the MIKTA Academic Network. This paper reflects only the author’s views and all errors remain my own. I acknowledge the support of the Australian Research Council through the Future Fellowship. Maps are provided by Cartogis, Australian National University.
1. There is no accepted definition of women’s economic empowerment in international law as yet, and there are a variety of ways the phrase is used by the UN, the OECD, the World Bank and states. The definition used in this paper using the two elements of success and power is based on the report by the International Center for Research on Women by Gollo, Malhotra, Nanda, and Mehra (Citation2011). They state at p. 4: ‘A woman is economically empowered when she has both the ability to succeed and advance economically and the power to make and act on economic decisions.’
2. See further Galinsky et al. (Citation2015) and Lückerath-Rovers (Citation2013).
3. These provisions include political and public life (Article 7), international organizations (Article 8), education (Article 10), employment (Article 11), health care (Article 12), financial credit (Article 13b), cultural life (Article 13c), the rural sector (Article 14), the law (Article 15) and marriage (Article 16).
4. A visual representation can be seen here: http://go.worldbank.org/9V87N19PJ0.
5. Response to question at the UN Commission for the Status of Women 58 side event on Gender Equality in Education, March 2014.
6. See generally ‘Women in the Economy’, Platform For Action, The United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing, China – September 1995, available at http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/beijing/platform/economy.htm.
7. See further the APEC ‘Gender Issues’ site: http://www.apec.org/Home/Groups/SOM-Steering-Committee-on-Economic-and-Technical-Cooperation/Working-Groups/Policy-Partnership-on-Women-and-the-Economy.
8. Available at https://www.microlinks.org/sites/default/files/resource/files/apec-women-and-the-economy-dashboard-framework.pdf.
9. See further the official MIKTA website: http://www.mikta.org.
10. See further the official GPFI website at http://www.gpfi.org/about-gpfi.
11. See further IORA/Gender at http://www.iora.net/about-us/priority-areas/gender-empowerment.aspx.
12. See further http://www.iora.net/media/151280/iora_economic_declaration.pdf.