Why tariffs disproportionately affect women.
In Brazil’s Folha de S. Paulo, journalist Bianca Santana notes the way in which the tariff wars accentuate an existing gender inequality in the global trade system, citing the concept of the “pink tariff” (for example, in the US imported men’s shirts were already taxed at 8% and women’s at 14%).
The new, higher tariffs, she suggests, are likely to increase precarity in workplaces across the Global South in which women represent the majority of the workforce.
We shouldn’t be surprised, she writes – the global trade system is mostly made by men, resulting in what Susan Scafidi of the US-based Fashion Law Institute refers to as “financial micro-aggressions”.
“It’s a political choice”, Santana notes: “it can’t be read as unintentional or a side-effect”. In trade, as in so much else, apparently technical matters have gender consequences.
Original article was written in Portuguese by Bianca Santana and published in Folha de S. Paulo on 13 April 2025. It’s available here.
Folha de S Paulo is a daily newspaper in Brazil.
Summary by CEM.
