Sixty-six participants from forty countries successfully completed the first edition of UNCTAD's online course on trade and gender, held from 19 January to 8 March 2015. All participants agreed the course had met or exceeded their expectations and enhanced their knowledge of the trade-gender links.
"Trade and gender is currently at the heart of development thinking, since incorporating gender into economic analysis allows us to capture the social and cultural aspects of our economy. .. This is critically needed for inclusive growth." said course graduate Elias Bagumhe, of Tanzania's Ministry of East African Cooperation.
The online course on trade and gender was developed by UNCTAD's Virtual Institute and Trade, Gender and Development Section, with financial support from the Government of Finland. Participants included academia, government, civil society and the private sector.
Using multimedia presentations and reading materials, the course combined theory with empirical evidence to explore the interaction between trade and gender, including the effects of trade on women's well-being and economic empowerment, and how gender-based inequalities affect trade performance.
The objective of the course was to provide participants with the knowledge needed to analyse the two-way relationship between trade and gender and, ultimately, to produce gender-aware policy recommendations.
Highly appreciated by participants According to the feedback received, the course succeeded in preparing participants to conduct their own research on the topic, incorporate trade and gender concepts into their teaching, and make their policy-related work more gender-aware, with respondents citing 61 ideas for research projects, 27 for inclusion in their teaching and 31 for policy design.  I will be lobbying the Zimbabwe Statistical Agency to disaggregate data by sex to enable researchers to carry out more informed studies on how men and women are impacted differently by trade. Evengelista Mudzonga Zimbabwe Economic Policy and Research Unit |  |
| I have already incorporated this topic into the teaching syllabus for my MPhil Economics students and hope to teach them some of the concepts in the coming weeks. Daniel Sakyi Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology |
| I am going to include the gender issues in the list of topics suggested to our students for elaboration of Master's theses. Paskal Zhelev Bulgaria's University of National and World Economy |
| The recommendations of the course about improving female workers' capacity when the economy shifts from labour-intensive production to one with more technological content will be considered from now on in my studies about the changes in Vietnamese economic structure and type of production. Nguyet Vu Viet Nam's Ministry of Industry and Trade |
The trade and gender project includes the development of teaching materials, training of academics and practitioners, and mentoring of researchers as they undertake original research on the topic.
The next phase of project will offer training on the empirical analysis of trade and gender through a regional workshop scheduled for June 15-19, 2015 in South Africa, and provide funding and mentoring of selected projects proposed by participants from lower-income and least developed countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
