Does Your Feminist T-Shirt Empower The Women Who Made It?

Photo: Shilpi Rani Das started working in a garment factory when she was 12 years old and moved to work at Rana Plaza at 13. She was working on the 8th floor at the time of the factory collapse. She lost an arm and spent the next 2 1/2 years in hospital. She is now at school, plays badminton and supports her family by sending money home. She is starting Open University.

 

The theme of International Women’s Day 2019 is #BalanceforBetter and asks how we can help forge a more gender-balanced world. Brands and retailers are, predictably, all doing their bit to show support, from Pretty Little Thing’s promotion of their #EveryBodyInPLT movement with T-shirts from £10, with profits going to the charity WAGGGS to Net-a-Porter’s limited edition collection in collaboration with six female designers, with profits going to Women for Women International.

None of the webpages about the T-shirts feature any information about how or where they are made or who made them. About 75 million people work directly in the fashion and textiles industry and about 80% of them are women. Many are subject to exploitation and verbal and physical abuse. They are often working in unsafe conditions, with very little pay.

Actress Aisling Bea tweeted during Fashion Revolution Week last year: “My particular bugbear is feminist tees which were not made by women who were paid fairly for their labour. Check your tags and brands.”

Slogan T-shirts with female empowerment messages will be everywhere this week to coincide with International Women’s Day, but the reality is that the fashion industry doesn’t empower the majority of women who work in it. Gender-based inequality remains a problem throughout the industry, from the highest levels of management to the shop floor and the factory floor. We still have a very long way to go until everyone who makes our clothes can live and work with dignity, in healthy conditions and without fear of losing their life.

One of the main projects Fashion Revolution worked on in 2017/18 was the Garment Worker Diaries. On-the-ground research partners met with 540 garment workers in India, Cambodia and Bangladesh on a weekly basis for twelve months to learn the intimate details of their lives. 60% reported gender-based discrimination, over 15% reported being threatened and 5% had been hit. When I met with the President of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association in November 2017, he told me categorically that sexual harassment doesn’t exist in garment factories in Bangladesh. One statistic I found particularly shocking was that 40% of the workers surveyed had seen a fire in their place of work. The women making our clothes are still risking their lives every day for our fashion fix.

 

In January, The Guardian revealed that Spice Girls T-shirts raising money for Comic Relief’s Gender Justice campaign were being made at a factory in Bangladesh where women earned 35p an hour and claimed to be verbally abused and harassed. Garment production in Bangladesh is still carried out in a very opaque manner and the lack of information about where our clothes and shoes are made and who made them is a huge barrier to changing the fashion industry. This means that gender inequality and human rights abuses and remain rife. If you can’t see it, you can’t fix it, which is why Fashion Revolution urges all brands and retailers to have full supply chain transparency, and we track this through our annual Fashion Transparency Index.

Fashion Revolution’s Fashion Transparency Index 2018 which reviews and ranks 150 major global brands and retailers according to their social and environmental policies, practices and impacts, throws a spotlight on how brands and retailers are tackling gender-based discrimination and violence in supply chains. The report specifically looks at how they are supporting gender equality and promoting female empowerment, both in their own company and in the supply chain.

Whilst, most brands publish policies on discrimination, harassment and abuse, the research show that only 37% of brands are publishing human rights goals. Without reporting on goals and, importantly, annual progress towards these goals, consumers have no way of knowing whether their clothing purchases are really helping to drive improvements for the women who are making their clothes.

Only 40% of brands and retailers reported on capacity building projects in the supply chain that are focused on gender equality or female empowerment, while just 13% publish detailed supplier guidance on issues facing female workers in their Supplier Codes of Conduct. Only 37 out of the 150 brands surveyed report signing up to the Women’s Empowerment Principles, an initiative by the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality, or publishing the company’s overall strategy and quantitative goals to advance women’s empowerment. Meanwhile, just 5% of brands are disclosing any data on the prevalence of gender-based labour violations in supplier facilities, such as sexual harassment and other forms of gender-based violence, or the treatment and firing of pregnant workers.

In the 2019 Fashion Transparency Index, to be published in April, we will be surveying 200 brands and asking the same questions around women’s empowerment. Women’s economic empowerment and closing gender gaps at work is key to realising women’s rights and central to achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, in particular SDG 8 on promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all.

According to the BoF McKinsey & Company report The State of Fashion 2019 “Younger generations’ passion for social and environmental causes has reached critical mass, causing brands to become more fundamentally purpose driven to attract both consumers and talent”. As a result, the appearance of the word “feminist” on retailer homepages and newsletters is forecast to increase in frequency sixfold compared to two years ago. Brands are adopting feel-good feminist slogans, yet the rise of real feminism and female empowerment within the industry is a long way off for most women who work in it, from the highest levels of management to the shop floor and the factory floor.

If we really want to see a more gender balanced world, brands and retailers need to do more than sell empowering T-shirts; they need to make sure their policies are put into practice. And not just in the visible places, on fashion shoots or within their company, but at every level of their supply chains. The people making our clothes may not be visible, but every garment they make has a silent #MeToo woven into its seams. At Fashion Revolution, we believe positive change in the fashion industry is possible, and it starts with transparency.

 

#MeToo: How Can Fashion Empower All Women?

 

“My particular bugbear is feminist tees which were not made by women who were paid fairly for their labour. Check your tags and brands” posted actress Aisling Bea during Fashion Revolution Week.

Slogan T-shirts with female empowerment messages are everywhere now, from the We Should All be Feminists T-Shirt on the catwalk at Christian Dior to the myriad versions sold in the High Street to coincide with International Women’s Day, but the reality is that the fashion industry doesn’t empower the majority of women who work in it. Gender-based inequality remains a problem throughout the industry, from the highest levels of management to the shop floor and the factory floor.

When I met with the President of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association in November, he told me that sexual harassment doesn’t exist in garment factories in Bangladesh, whereas statistics show around 60% of Bangladeshi garment workers have suffered from sexual harassment. Earlier this week, Fashion Revolution organised Fashion Question Time at the Houses of Parliament, hosted by Mary Creagh MP. The panellists debated whether, 5 years after the Rana Plaza disaster, the fashion industry was a better place for women to work. I put forward the question ‘The #MeToo movement is inspiring, but can it ever deliver freedom from discrimination and abuse for the millions of women who work in fashion supply chains?’

Lord Bates responded “there are two things that always work to lift people out of poverty: education for women and girls and female economic empowerment”.

Rushanara Ali MP added “we need to focus on the rights agenda as much as we do on economic empowerment to get results. We need to target our DFID aid efforts to this as mch as social and economic development. We have a female Prime Minister and I’d like to see us use our leadership globally”.

Research published this week by Fashion Revolution shows that gender-based inequality remains a problem throughout the fashion industry, from the highest levels of management to the shop floor and the factory floor. About 75 million people work directly in the fashion and textiles industry and about 80% of them are women. Many are subject to exploitation and verbal and physical abuse. They are often working in unsafe conditions, with very little pay.

Fashion Revolution’s Fashion Transparency Index 2018 which reviews and ranks 150 major global brands and retailers according to their social and environmental policies, practices and impacts, throws a spotlight on how brands and retailers are tackling gender-based discrimination and violence in supply chains. The report specifically looks at how they are supporting gender equality and promoting female empowerment, both in their own company and in the supply chain.

Whilst, most brands publish policies on discrimination, harassment and abuse, the research show that only 37% of brands are publishing human rights goals. Without reporting on goals and, importantly, annual progress towards these goals, consumers have no way of knowing whether their clothing purchases are really helping to drive improvements for the women who are making their clothes.

Only 40% of brands and retailers reported on capacity building projects in the supply chain that are focused on gender equality or female empowerment, while just 13% publish detailed supplier guidance on issues facing female workers in their Supplier Codes of Conduct. Only 37 out of the 150 brands surveyed report signing up to the Women’s Empowerment Principles, an initiative by the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality, or publishing the company’s overall strategy and quantitative goals to advance women’s empowerment.

Meanwhile, just 5% of brands are disclosing any data on the prevalence of gender-based labour violations in supplier facilities, such as sexual harassment and other forms of gender-based violence, or the treatment and firing of pregnant workers.

 

 

 

Five years after the Rana Plaza collapse, women in Bangladesh are certainly working in safer conditions as a result of factory inspections and remediation, but little to nothing has been done to make them safer from harassment, violence and abuse. Brands need to do more than sell empowering T-shirts. They need to make sure their policies are put into practice, and not just in the visible places during fashion shoots or within their company, but also in their supply chains. The people making our clothes may not be visible, but every garment they make has a silent #MeToo woven into its seams.

Fabric of the Nation

How can men recognise the contributions of female garment workers in Bangladesh?

Mahbub Rahman, a student at Dhaka University, was whiling the sultry afternoon away on a rooftop a few months ago when he overheard a conversation that made him sit up.

 

“Four female garment factory workers were there, discussing their problems with their families. Despite earning money, they still had difficulty gaining respect in their husbands’ family, and so on….”

Those comments stuck with him for a long time after.

“It struck me that that was genuinely the scenario that was so problematic in our country. Despite earning money and contributing to their families they had no recognition, no personal life, and people refuse to talk to them as they are poor.”

Bangladesh’s export trade is dominated by the ready-made garments (RMG) industry. It became the first multi-billion dollar manufacturing and export industry in Bangladesh in 2005, accounting for 75 per cent of the country’s earnings. Over 80 per cent of the garment workers in Bangladesh are female.

“The participation of women in the RMG industry, as well in other sectors, is on the rise. At a bank where I did an internship, 25 out of 30 employees are female,” Mahbub noted.

 

“But opportunities most women to gain social recognition or creative expression through leisure activities are still limited. For me, the main problem that women face is that many of them remain confined within the boundaries of their rooms.”

Despite the significant impact of organisations like Grameen Bank and the BRAC that have done much to address issues of gender equality, Mahbub believes that women continue to remain on the bottom rungs of the social ladder due to the poor mentalities that men possess.

“The main problems still reside within the family. The approach towards women in our country is still too mean. We need more organizations to work towards women empowerment, promoting the idea that we should treat women fairly as fellow human beings.”

Even now, if a woman says that she is planning to start a business, people will mock or discourage her.

“People say, ‘Oh no! You can’t do that! Business is only for men, you have to take a lot of risk and suffer a lot of pressure, and you have to go to many places and stay out till late at night!”

“But I think that even poor and less educated women have the means and the ability to start their own businesses if they want to.”

Even though more female university students like Mahbub’s schoolmates are now working proudly in multi-national corporations or local organizations, even a woman from an educated family often has to face such obstacles if she proposes the idea of becoming an entrepreneur.

“The main problem women are facing is that they are confined within the boundary of their room. But they are also innovative people who can lead an organization or even a country. Yet, they don’t get the chance!

Spurred by his belief that it is the psychological attitudes of men towards women that can best bridge the gender gap in his counry, Mahbub joined Lensational in February as a programme leader, working with female employees in the RMG industry to find means of expression through photography.

 

“I wanted to become involved with an organisation that can at least help them to think — “yes, I can do that.”

It is that crucial mental shift — so very lacking due to the discouraging attitudes of men — that can help women share their story with the world, learn about their rights, and achieve their true potential.

Lensational will be returning to Bangladesh in May 2015 to equip 10 factory workers and 8 surf girls with permanent access to cameras. Read more about our project here.

Mahbub completed his undergraduate degree in Marketing from the University Of Dhaka in March 2015 and is preparing to start his MBA degree in May. Now based in Dhaka, Bangladesh, he joined Lensational in February 2015. He is also Head of Brand Promotion and Communication at the Dhaka University Social Business Society (DUSBS).