Lesotho (50%), Cambodia (49%), Laos (48%), Madagascar (47%) and Vietnam (46%) top the list of countries facing the highest tariffs for their exports into the United States. This could equally be a list of countries where women workers are the most exposed to trade shocks—whether from increased customs duties or from the general uncertainty that prevails, even as the initially announced tariffs have been put on hold.

The sector most exposed to trade shocks is textiles and garments, a female-intensive industry in which working conditions tend to be poor and wages low. The economic profiles of Cambodia, Lesotho, and Vietnam are textbook cases of the role of women in export-oriented textile production in the developing countries facing the highest US tariff hikes.

Cambodia

Textiles and garments—including footwear and travel goods—made up 57% of Cambodia’s exports in 2022, valued at $22.5 billion. The US is the country’s largest export market, contributing around a quarter of its GDP. The industry’s 800’000 jobs makes it the country’s largest formal employer and women—mostly aged under 30—represent 80% of the workforce. There is a gender wage gap: women earn less and are over-represented in lower-status and lower-skill positions. In recent years employers have increasingly been offering short-term contracts and outsourcing production to smaller, informal enterprises. Some 20% of Cambodia’s population live below the poverty line.

Lesotho

Textiles and footwear are Lesotho’s main exports to the US, with around three quarters of production destined for that market, including for global brands such as Levi’s, Wrangler, and Gap. The industry accounts for about 20% of Lesotho’s GDP and is the largest private employer in the country, employing over 30’000 people, mainly women. Wages are low, and women face gender equality deficits and regularly report sexual assault and harassment. Nearly half of Lesotho’s population live below the poverty line.

Vietnam

About 30% of Vietnam’s GDP comes from exports to the US, with textiles alone accounting for 16% and revenues of around $11 billion in 2023. Vietnam has emerged as a manufacturing hub for many global brands and retailers, including Nike, Adidas, and Uniqlo, and the textile sector employs some 2.5 million women, accounting for 74.8 % of the workforce. In 2023, the gender wage gap stood at 9.3%, mainly explained by the fact that female workers are often engage in lower-skilled tasks and work less overtime due to gender-related responsibilities. Most women are engaged on temporary contracts, and safety concerns persist. Less than 4% of the Vietnamese population lives under the poverty line.

The prevalence of women workers in textile production in developing countries is no coincidence: cheap female labour is the very reason behind investments in the sector in economies with easy access to major markets like Europe and North America.

Export-oriented production from the 1960s onwards has relied on the low wages of women and enabled a massive influx of women workers into the workforce, initially into labour-intensive manufacturing production and more recently services. Increased female labour force participation has contributed to poverty reduction, the empowerment of women, and social development around the world.

Yet a large share of women remain concentrated in low-skilled activities in export sectors, with fewer chances to access the higher-value-added jobs that remain male-dominated. Women are less likely than men to join a trade union, participate in professional training, or work overtime. Employers often take advantage of gendered social norms, and the crucial fact that women have more care duties than men, to keep their pay low. These factors combine to keep women in the lower echelons of the job market.

The textiles industry illustrates these dynamics perfectly. Women are disproportionally represented in lower-skill roles, their wages are low, and they are frequently engaged as subcontractors or on temporary contracts. In addition, they are often subjected to violations of their rights and exposed to harassment and difficult working conditions.

Textiles and clothing production is a cut-throat sector, subject to intense international competition and thin margins. Buyers apply pressure on suppliers to produce on short delivery times and at low prices. As labour constitutes a large proportion of production costs, cheaper female labour is essential for a textile factory to survive. This labour is often used by employers as a company safety valve in hard times: if labour costs rise, sales decline, or market access conditions deteriorate, factories will lay off workers or investors look to move production elsewhere.

In either scenario, women lose out more than men. Not only do they represent the majority of the textiles sector’s workforce, their precarious status means that they are often the first to lose their jobs; as demonstrated in past recessions or trade shocks such as when the Covid-19 pandemic suddenly froze the sale of clothes. Additionally, the lower wages earned by women make them less able to withstand shocks such as the loss of income. And because women spend a greater share of their income on food and other essentials, the impacts of their job losses ripple through households and communities.

Textile imports into the US dropped drastically between March and April. As the sector grapples with lower sales, added costs, and market uncertainty due to lack of clarity on future US tariff policy, there are reports of leading US brands such as Levi’s, Walmart, and Gap asking for discounts from their Bangladesh factory suppliers or telling them to pay the extra tariffs. And as early as February, Shein was said to have been asking leading factories to move production sites from China to Vietnam in anticipation of higher US tariffs on Chinese imports.

Past experience shows how footloose investments in textiles can be. In response to the rising wages of women workers, textile production shifted from Mauritius to Madagascar in the 1990s. After the 2005 phase-out of the Multi-Fibre Agreement—a system of quotas governing global trade in textiles and clothing since the mid-1970s—investors rapidly moved production from Central America and Africa to Asia.

Will textile production move in response to the current trade policy landscape? Possibly.

To the US? “Absolutely not” says Casey Barnett, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Cambodia. Even though 97% of clothing sold in the US is imported, industry experts agree that the odds of production moving to America are extremely low.

This article does not purport to further demonstrate the absurdity or moral reprehensibility of Trump’s stated tariff logic—others are ably doing so. Rather, it aims to focus attention on how trade shocks affect the women who are most vulnerable to such disruptions and what can be done to protect them.

Before turning to the issue of women’s rights in global value chains, we can briefly consider the tariff-related gender equality question that has caught the mainstream media’s attention: the “pink tariff.” A study comparing nearly 200,000 paired tariff rates—or reciprocal tariffs—on men’s and women’s products in 167 countries between 1995 and 2015 found that women’s goods faced tariffs 0.7% higher on average than equivalent items for men. In the US, the gap is wider: tariff rates on women’s clothing are 2.9 percentage points higher than the already-high 13.6% average tariff rate for men’s clothing. (Interestingly, the global study also found that the presence of women in the legislature is associated with lower tariffs on women’s goods. As if to corroborate this finding, in January 2025 two US congresswomen introduced legislation directing the US government to examine the impact of tariffs on women and other consumer groups.)

What the pink tariff narrative conceals is the gendered pattern of household consumption: women spend a higher portion of their income on clothes for the family, be it t-shirts for boys, dresses for girls, or underwear for men. The lower a women’s wages, the higher the portion of her income spent on clothes. In other words, the pink tariff issue is not about women’s clothes but about how the burden of tariffs on essential goods falls harder on women than on men, and hardest of all on women in the poorest households. This is amplified by the fact that cheap, mass-market goods are often subject to higher rates than luxury items.

In short, the US tariff structure already penalized low-income women. New increases will deepen their financial strain.

Trade shocks are not new and will continue to occur in the future due to factors like pandemics, wars, or climatic events for example. But make no mistake, the current shock—triggered by US tariff policy leading to additional import levies—has not caused the structural factors that put the rights of so many women at risk. They merely serve as a reminder that global supply chains, designed for efficiency and profit, rely on the expendability of female labour.

Over the past decade, international trade discussions and fora have been increasing their focus on women, with governments and intergovernmental agencies alike implementing initiatives to promote gender equality in trade. UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) was a pioneer in this regard, with its early work engaging with the multiple facets of the relationship between trade and gender equality. UNCTAD’s broad approach has documented the economic expectations and realities of how trade policies impact women, reminding policymakers that the gendered impacts of trade vary depending on the position of women in the economy. It has offered granular research and recommended policies—such as social infrastructure investments for example—that address the societal factors that hold women back in the global economy and maintain them at the bottom of global value chains.

The prevailing narrative in trade circles now is that trade can dramatically improve women’s lives, with most initiatives focusing on helping women entrepreneurs access international markets. This approach, however, only benefits a small minority and diverts attention from the structural factors that perpetuate the exploitation of women workers. While international trade institutions appear stuck at the "empowering women entrepreneurs" stage, what is really needed is meaningful engagement on the complex links between job quality, women’s rights, global competition, and economic equity between countries.

Discussions of worker rights in the multilateral trade context have been fraught, with (justified) fears that higher labour standards would erode many countries’ competitiveness. The current situation, with US tariffs so brutally targeting already poor and vulnerable workers, can serve as another call for the world to live up to its responsibilities. The wealthiest among us need to acknowledge that our capacity to buy so much relies on the exploitation of people further down the value chain. Governments need to address the power imbalances in global production and recognize the need for global economic justice, if only to do right by the millions of women who work for us. Hopefully, the current furore over US tariff policy will help trigger greater global solidarity, awareness, and action.

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Caroline Dommen works on economic policy from a human rights, feminist, and solidarity perspective.

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Synergies by TESS is a blog dedicated to promoting inclusive policy dialogue at the intersection of trade, environment, and sustainable development, drawing on perspectives from a range of experts from around the globe.

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