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Prioritizing the shift from a traditional economy towards complex integrated economies has been the top priority among policymakers to achieve sustainable development goals (SDGs). Countries involved in economic integration must safeguard their labor markets. The Developing-8 (D-8) is an alliance of economic cooperation including Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan and Turkey, all of which are among the world’s largest labor-abundant countries but have insufficient attention toward labor market policies, especially in gender roles. This issue motivated this study, which aims to investigate the impact of economic complexity on trade through with the interaction of gender equality.

The annual data for the panel of D-8 countries from 1990 to 2020 were collected. The Driscoll and Kraay (D-K) regression was employed for empirical investigation after observing the presence of autocorrelation, heteroscedasticity and cross-sectional dependency (CSD) across the sample.

Findings show that the economic complexity index (ECI) and gender equality (GE) have a significant impact on trade openness (TO). Moreover, the interaction of GE and ECI strengthens the relationship between ECI and TO. Therefore, both factors worked together to enhance the trading system by supplying the nation with highly sophisticated and complex products.

Policymakers in D-8 countries should enable equal access to resources, investment and decision-making for both men and women. This leads toward stubble, innovative and complex products that enhance trade and goodwill in the international market.

This study incorporated GE as an interaction term in economic complexity and TO in D-8 countries for the first time, to the best of the authors' knowledge.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-11-2023-0908