Globalization, Women’s Economic Rights and Forced Labor

The research finds that increased trade openness is associated with better economic rights for women and a lower incidence of forced labor, both in global and developing country samples. In contrast, the level of foreign direct investment (FDI) penetration generally shows no statistically significant impact on these specific labor rights.

• Countries with higher levels of trade openness tend to provide better economic rights to women and exhibit a lower incidence of forced labor. This relationship remains consistent when analyzing a sub-sample of developing countries and when using instrumental variable regression to control for feedback effects.
• The extent of an economy's penetration by foreign direct investment (FDI), measured as the ratio of accumulated FDI stocks to GDP, generally has no statistically significant impact on women's economic rights or the incidence of forced labor.
• Women's economic rights are found to be better in countries that are more developed, more democratic, and those where the chief executive belongs to a left-wing party. Conversely, rights are lower in countries with a higher percentage of Muslims.
• The ratification of ILO Conventions 100 and 111 (regarding economic discrimination) generally does not significantly impact actual women's economic rights, although ratification of Convention 111 showed an association with better rights when regional dummy variables were included.
• Regarding forced labor, the results for political regimes were inconsistent across different measures; one measure suggested more democratic countries had a higher incidence of forced labor, but this was not supported by the alternative measure used in the study.
• The study suggests that trade openness may promote the realization of core ILO labor rights, specifically the elimination of forced labor and economic discrimination, even if globalization might otherwise weaken the general bargaining position of labor.

APA

Neumayer, E., & de Soysa, I. (2007). Globalization, Women’s Economic Rights and Forced Labor. Peace Research Institute Oslo. https://cdn.cloud.prio.org/files/91c50824-fcc1-4188-8e85-4a40ae41db77/Globalisation Womens Economic Rights and Forced Labour.pdf?inline=true

Chicago

Neumayer, Eric, and Indra de Soysa. Globalization, Women’s Economic Rights and Forced Labor. Peace Research Institute Oslo, 2007. https://cdn.cloud.prio.org/files/91c50824-fcc1-4188-8e85-4a40ae41db77/Globalisation Womens Economic Rights and Forced Labour.pdf?inline=true.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Neumayer |first1=Eric |last2=de Soysa |first2=Indra |title=Globalization, Women’s Economic Rights and Forced Labor |publisher=Peace Research Institute Oslo |date=February 2007 |url=https://cdn.cloud.prio.org/files/91c50824-fcc1-4188-8e85-4a40ae41db77/Globalisation Womens Economic Rights and Forced Labour.pdf?inline=true |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{neumayer2007globalization, author = {Neumayer, Eric and de Soysa, Indra}, title = {{Globalization, Women’s Economic Rights and Forced Labor}}, institution = {Peace Research Institute Oslo}, year = {2007}, month = feb, url = {https://cdn.cloud.prio.org/files/91c50824-fcc1-4188-8e85-4a40ae41db77/Globalisation Womens Economic Rights and Forced Labour.pdf?inline=true}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }