Banyan Global implemented the global Women’s Economic Empowerment and Equality Technical Assistance (WE3 TA) task order, awarded under the Advancing the Agenda of Gender Equality (ADVANTAGE) indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract. Under the direction of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Bureau for Development, Democracy, and Innovation’s Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Hub (DDI/GenDev), Banyan Global provided advisory services to stakeholders to better analyze, design, implement, and monitor interventions addressing women’s economic empowerment and equality constraints and opportunities in support of USAID’s Gender Equality and Female Empowerment Policy.

To support USAID staff working on trade, DDI/GenDev requested that Banyan Global conduct a desk review on the importance of and evidence supporting the integration of women’s economic empowerment and gender equality into trade and develop a related briefer. The relationship between cross-border trade in goods and services and women’s economic empowerment is at a moment of exceptional potential. In all its partner countries, USAID can help women access quality jobs related to trade, thrive as entrepreneurs who do business in global markets, and increase their influence as economic decision-makers. In less formal environments where small-scale women traders shepherd their goods through dangerous, exploitative, or prohibitively expensive conditions, USAID can both foster tangible new commitments to their safety and improve their prospects for economic success. By engaging, in particular, the tools and benefits of inclusive digital transformation, USAID can help developing economies link their engagement of global value chains to reduced poverty, greater opportunity, and narrowing of gender gaps that persist in confining the economic potential of women.