Abstract
'Mexico should have waited to be caressed first, before dropping its pants.'1 With these words Jesus Silva Herzog, former finance minister of Mexico, summed up his criticism of President Salinas de Gortari's proposal for a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The most interesting aspect of his statement is not that Silva Herzog is opposed to NAFTA but that he chose to use a gendered metaphor to voice his opposition. As Carol Cohn has so aptly shown in her essay about US defence intellectuals, gendered metaphors are often used in international relations without much thought being given to their (unintended?) implications.2 Whether intended or not Silva Herzog's remark underlies the need for critical feminist analyses of 'new regionalism' at the empirical as well as the theoretical level. Yet, to date there is a dearth of information about the gender implications of emerging regional trading blocs. In this article I will try to take one of the first steps towards filling this gap. However, before embarking on this project it is imperative to outline briefly the global processes of political and economic restructuring of which the 'new regionalism', and particularly NAFTA, are part.
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