In this interesting article, Ann Le Mare looks at the Fair Trade movement and its relationship to global development. After a brief discussion of both Fair Trade and development, the author uses her own research with a group of Fair Trade producers in Bangladesh to illustrate the benefits of Fair Trade to producers, particularly women. She shows how enabling women to become producers and earners benefits not only themselves, in terms of greater confidence and empowerment, but also their families. The women’s earnings help to keep their families from the worst effects of poverty, and there are other important benefits such as the ability to keep children (including girls) in education, and the greater likelihood of using health services. While of obvious relevance to students taking the ‘Global development’ option, there are also relevant points for the topic of ‘Stratification and differentiation’.
‘Fair Trade’ refers to a specific type of trading relationship, based on longterm cooperative partnerships between producer organisations in the global South and retail organisations, such as Oxfam and Traidcraft, in the global North.
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