Recent policy brief by ICRIER Shows the big gap between promise and action
By R. Suryamurthy
India’s trade negotiators have, over the past decade, begun to speak a new language—one that acknowledges women not merely as beneficiaries of growth, but as agents within it. Yet, as the fine print of the country’s recent free trade agreements (FTAs) reveals, this rhetorical shift has not been matched by structural clarity or policy conviction. The result is a curious halfway house: gender has entered India’s trade vocabulary, but not yet its operational grammar.
A recent policy brief by the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, authored by Nisha Taneja, Sanjana Joshi, Vasudha Upreti and Pratik Tiwary, lays bare this contradiction with unusual precision. It is not that India has done nothing—far from it. Of the eight trade agreements signed between 2016 and 2026, five include some reference to gender. The problem, rather, is that these references vary wildly in ambition, depth, and enforceability, betraying a lack of coherence that cannot be explained away as mere transition.
To understand why this matters, one must first recognise what is at stake. Trade policy, despite its technocratic veneer, shapes the everyday economic possibilities available to millions. In India, where more than 30 million women-led enterprises are already part of the formal ecosystem—and where millions more women remain clustered in labour-intensive export sectors such as textiles, apparel and leather—the design of trade agreements is not a distant diplomatic exercise. It determines who gets access to markets, who secures financing, who navigates customs systems with ease, and who remains locked out.
And yet, Indian trade policy has historically treated gender as an afterthought. Earlier frameworks, including successive Foreign Trade Policies, were effectively gender-blind, operating on the assumption that neutrality would translate into fairness. It has taken global pressure, shifting development narratives, and the slow but undeniable rise of women entrepreneurs to challenge that assumption.
What has emerged since is not a decisive break, but a cautious recalibration. Consider the India-UAE Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, often cited as the first instance where gender entered India’s FTA framework. Its provisions, however, are modest—encouraging cooperation on women-led SMEs, facilitating information exchange, and promoting entrepreneurship networks. These are not insignificant steps, but they are also not transformative. They address the margins of the problem, not its core: the structural barriers that prevent women from scaling businesses, accessing capital, or integrating into global value chains.
A similar pattern repeats in the India-Oman Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, where gender appears briefly within the SME chapter, almost as an aside. The language is aspirational, the commitments diffuse, and the mechanisms for implementation largely absent. One is left with the impression that gender has been included because it must be mentioned, not because it has been systematically thought through.
Even where the ambition rises, the execution falters. The India-EFTA Trade and Economic Partnership Agreement acknowledges the importance of gender-inclusive growth within its sustainable development chapter, but stops short of translating that acknowledgement into actionable commitments. There are no binding obligations, no institutional structures, no measurable targets—only a reaffirmation of intent. It is, in policy terms, a gesture.
The high watermark, at least on paper, is the India-UK Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement. Here, for the first time, India agrees to a standalone chapter on Trade and Gender Equality, complemented by cross-cutting provisions in areas such as digital trade, labour, financial services, and government procurement. A dedicated working group is envisaged to oversee implementation, signalling a move towards institutionalisation.
And yet, even this agreement—widely hailed as a breakthrough—reveals the limits of India’s current approach. Strip away the architecture, and one finds a familiar absence: no binding commitments, no enforcement mechanisms, no dedicated budgetary support, and critically, no targeted trade facilitation measures for women. This last omission is particularly telling. For all the emphasis on inclusion, the agreement does little to address the day-to-day obstacles that women exporters face—complex customs procedures, opaque regulatory systems, limited access to trade finance, and the persistent gender gap in digital access.
In other words, the scaffolding has been erected, but the building remains unfinished. The India-European Union Free Trade Agreement offers a similar story, albeit in a different register. Its provisions on gender are more detailed than earlier agreements, outlining cooperation in areas ranging from data collection to financial inclusion and digital trade. But here too, the language is facilitative rather than mandatory, the timelines undefined, and the institutional mechanisms underdeveloped. It is an agreement that recognises the problem, sketches out a response, and then stops short of committing to delivery.
This pattern—of aspiration outpacing implementation—points to a deeper structural issue. India’s engagement with gender in trade appears reactive, shaped as much by the priorities of its negotiating partners as by its own policy framework. The most substantive provisions are found in agreements with developed economies such as the UK and the EU, where gender has already been mainstreamed into trade policy. By contrast, agreements with developing partners tend to revert to minimalism.
Such variability is not merely an academic concern. It reflects the absence of a standardised template, a guiding philosophy that ensures consistency across agreements. Without this, gender provisions risk becoming negotiable add-ons rather than foundational elements—present when demanded, diluted when not.
What, then, needs to change? First, India must move from symbolic inclusion to structural integration. This means embedding gender considerations across all core chapters of FTAs—trade facilitation, services, digital trade, government procurement—rather than confining them to standalone sections or SME provisions. Gender is not a niche concern; it intersects with every dimension of trade.
Second, the country must invest in data. The lack of sex-disaggregated trade data remains a critical blind spot, limiting the ability of policymakers to design targeted interventions or assess the impact of existing ones. Without data, gender-responsive trade policy risks becoming an exercise in guesswork.
Third, institutional mechanisms must be strengthened. Working groups, where they exist, need clear mandates, timelines, and accountability frameworks. Stakeholder engagement—particularly with women entrepreneurs—must be systematic, not incidental. Policy cannot be designed in isolation from those it seeks to serve.
Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, India must embrace ex-ante gender impact assessments. Trade agreements are forward-looking instruments; their consequences unfold over years, even decades. Assessing their gendered impact before they are signed would allow for course correction at the design stage, rather than retrofitting solutions after inequalities have deepened.
There is also a more subtle shift required—one of mindset. For too long, the inclusion of gender in trade policy has been viewed through a defensive lens, as a concession to external pressure or a potential Trojan horse for protectionism. This suspicion, while not entirely unfounded in a world of strategic trade politics, cannot be allowed to dictate policy indefinitely.
Because the reality is this: India’s own economic trajectory is increasingly tied to the participation of women. The growth of women-led enterprises, the expansion of digital platforms, the push towards manufacturing and exports—all of these trends point towards a future where women are central, not peripheral, to economic activity.
Trade policy must catch up with that reality. At present, it has not. What exists is a patchwork—part aspiration, part experimentation, part negotiation-driven compromise. It is, as the ICRIER brief aptly puts it, a work in progress. But progress, if it is to be meaningful, cannot remain incremental forever.
There comes a point when the question is no longer whether gender should be included in trade agreements, but how seriously that inclusion is intended to be. India, it seems, is approaching that point. (IPA Service)
