ABSTRACT Gender inequality remains a major barrier to inclusive development, yet the gender implications of deeper integration into global value chains (GVCs) are not fully understood across regions. This paper examines whether rising GVC participation is associated with lower gender inequality, focusing on East Asia and the Pacific (EAP) and South Asia and the Middle East and North Africa (SA&MENA) economies from 1990 to 2018. Using a country‐year panel and two‐way fixed effects (TWFE) models that exploit within‐country changes in GVC participation, we find that higher GVC participation is associated with lower Gender Inequality Index (GII), with larger magnitudes in EAP than in SA&MENA. Forward linkages exhibit a stronger negative association than backward linkages. Component outcomes show improvements in employment equality in both regions, while health and education effects are clearer in the world sample and EAP. Interaction evidence suggests that productivity and legal frameworks condition the GVC–gender relationship. Policy implications are to promote upgrading toward higher value‐added GVC integration and women's access to better‐quality jobs across regions, and especially in SA&MENA, to strengthen and enforce women's overall legal protections and workplace rights to better translate integration into lower inequality.
Nguyen et al. (Wed,) studied this question.