The increasing emphasis on international trade as a means for economic development led nations across the globe to liberalize trade at the end of the 20th century. These policies were especially prominent in Southeast Asia where the era transformed the region into one of the most economically open in the world today. Along with policy and institutional contextualization, this paper empirically examines the effects of Malaysia's 1990s free trade agreements with both Romania and Chile on women’s employment. Using individual-level census data, state-level employment data, and national-level export data, the work measures the effect that the free trade agreements have on the likelihood of women’s employment between 1991-2000. There is insufficient evidence in this work that these agreements had any effect on the likelihood of women’s employment.