From “free” trade to farm women: Gender and the neoliberal environment

Abstract

This chapter challenges the economismof contemporarymacroeconomic policy through an environmental and gendered lens. It uses a feminist political economy framework to analyze newly released statistical data on international trade flows from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), as well as statistics on Canadian agricultural production. The analysis moves through three levels of inquiry?– macro, meso, and micro – to examine the interaction of neoliberal policy, gender, and environment.At the macro level, it questions the neoliberal discourse of “efficiency” by using trade data to illustrate the environmental inefficiencies of the current trade regime, especially the phenomenon of “trade for trade’s sake”. It links the neoliberal policy regime to its environmental consequences at the meso level of Canadian agricultural production. Finally, the gendered effects of neoliberalism are illustrated by examining the situation of Canadian farm women. Although macrolevel policies are often portrayed as “gender neutral”, their unique effects on farm women’s lives are elucidated using the concept of social reproduction.