Achieving SDG 5, gender equality and empower all women and girls, in developing countries: how aid for trade can help?

Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate whether aggregate and sectoral disbursement of aid for trade (AfT) facilitates achieving gender equality and women empowerment in aid-recipient developing countries for the period 2005–2019. Design/methodology/approach The study develops static and dynamic panel data and empirical specifications and employs fixed effects and generalised method of moments (GMM) estimation techniques to estimate the impact of aggregate AfT and different categories of AfT on women empowerment. The study uses the Gender Inequality Index (GII) and Global Gender Gap Index (GGI) as the proxy measures of SDG-5, where the higher (lower) value of GII (GGI) implies higher gender disparities and lower women empowerment, and vice versa. Findings The study finds that aggregate AfT and…