This paper examines global trends in gender-responsive trade policy by tracing how gender provisions in regional trade agreements (RTAs) have evolved from declaratory language towards institutionalised mechanisms and what this shift implies for domestic policy space. It assesses the recently enforced India-UK CETA’s design against global benchmarks and India’s own structural constraints, including export-oriented manufacturing’s untapped potential to absorb female labour, capacity constraints due to the dominance of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and barriers to network and information access that keep women-led enterprises out of trade. The paper argues that enforceability is not the sole measure of a provision’s strength, and that commitments calibrated to national circumstance can generate substantive obligations over time through a robust implementation practice, with India-UK CETA’s Working Group as the test case for whether they do.
