India Adds Gender Equality Clause in Trade Deal with UK

By: WE Staff | Thursday, 31 July 2025

• India signs its first complete chapter on gender equality in a trade deal in the CETA with the UK.
• It is a shift in methodology from India's past stance of keeping out non-trade issues.

India has enrolled for the first time in a full chapter on gender equality in trade, with the recently signed Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between the nation and the UK, besides including an express commitment in the preamble to “increasing women's access to and ability to benefit maximally from the opportunities generated by this Agreement”, as gender experts are applauding.

Prior to that, the India-UAE Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) 2022 was the only one that had a mention in the chapter on micro, small and medium-sized enterprises towards facilitation of bilateral cooperation on youth women's SMEs, start-ups.

It also enables cooperation between such SMEs and their participation in international trade as well as information sharing on entrepreneur education and awareness programmes for women and youth to enable the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

India has been an active promoter of gender equality in international opportunities, being one of the first countries to ratify the United Nations General Assembly's Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), adopted in 1979.

It is a signatory to the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action of 1995 in support of women empowerment as well as being strongly committed to the achievement of Goal 5 of the UN's 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) aimed at achieving gender equality and empowerment of all women and girls.

In addition, India supports the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (2015) that identifies the important role of international trade as a means to spur economic growth which is inclusive and leads to poverty reduction as well as specifically highlights its role in promoting the empowerment of women.

However, traditionally India has steered clear of connecting so-called ‘non-trade/progressive issues’ such as human rights, labor standards, gender and environment with world trade being bilateral and multilateral, largely viewing them as ‘veiled protectionism’.