Can work in the garment industry lift women up? We speak to two pioneers making this happen around the globe. 

First up, Colleen Clines, one half the sister duo behind Anchal Project, tells us about their journey to creating a global business that lifts women up. It all began in 2009, says Colleen, “While in India, I was introduced to the exploitive world of the commercial sex trade and the extreme lack of opportunity for women in the community. It was in this moment I was inspired to design more than beautiful landscapes, determined to create positive social and environmental change using design.”

Today, Anchal Project works across India and the USA to both train artisans and create projects that generate a meaningful and empowering income for women in both countries. Their Stitch by Stitch program in Ajmer, India operates within a hub of commerical sex work, offereing a different path for women with limited opportunities who are vulnerable to sex work and abuse. 

Colleen says, “85% of Anchal artisans answered that they had joined the commercial sex trade because there was no existing alternative. If the choice to be a commercial sex worker belonged to them, it was a helpless, desperate decision amidst a financial crisis. The average artisan tried leaving the sex trade two or more times, but returned because she was unable to earn a living. Some of the artisans shared that they tried to leave upwards of five times.” 

On the other side of the world, in Louisville, Kentucky, women who are recovering or vulnerable to Kentucky’s high rates of sexual violence can take part in their educational workshops, financial planning, and stress management alongside product creation and making skills. 

“We felt compelled to take the project beyond the classroom with the conviction that our design training, in collaboration with local leadership, could address seemingly intractable social and environmental systems. The women we met became our sisters, sisters we had to fight for”, says Colleen. 

Like Anchal Project, SOKO Kenya is a fashion brand that exists with decent work as the foundation. Jo Maiden, the founder, tells us how the brand originated to solve a problem.

“I first visited Kenya with Dave, my husband, in 2007 on a trip with Ethical Fashion Forum. We both fell in love with the country and saw an opportunity to create sustainable change through fashion. We wanted to develop a creative, long-term solution to the high levels of unemployment in the local community.”

Like the wider industry, SOKO’s workforce is largely made up of women. Yet while the mainstream fashion industry often oppresses its heavily female workforce, SOKO came about to change the system. 

“Our three production supervisors are women and have been with me since the beginning of SOKO Kenya in 2009”, says Jo. “We hope that having women in management positions is motivational for other women in the factory and encourages them to take the steps required to progress in their career”. She adds that “When a new employee joins SOKO Kenya, we make sure that they have set up their own bank account as a starting point. Throughout the year they are also offered various financial trainings to encourage independent saving and spending.”

If this doesn’t seem radical, it’s worth considering that around the globe, only 58% of women report having a bank account, while that number is 65% for men (World Bank, 2015). 

And, like Anchal Project, the brand isn’t just about making things, but about teaching skills. “Our Stitching Academy was born out of SOKO Kenya’s need to employ more people but no one had the right skillset. We wanted to offer a comprehensive training for in the community (and now beyond) that would allow locals to be able to work as a machinist in any factory in the country, not just SOKO Kenya. This means offering training on a variety of different machines and specialities, including cutting and quality control, so that we increase their chances of being employed.”

As we consider how the fashion industry can rethink its oppressive systems, and put an end to gender equality, these considerations of education and training, decent work, living wages, and financial literacy are some of the greatest pillars to lift up women and improve lives. 

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.

“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.

Microfinance is based on the philosophy that even very small amounts of credit can help end the cycle of poverty. 70% of the world’s poor are women, and 80% of the world’s garment workers are women.    Microfinance organisations typically lend to women, not only because they are considered a good investment as they are more likely to repay their loans, but also because lending to women brings with it a raft of social benefits for the women, their families and the wider community.

Microcredit has its advocates and its critics. Fashion Revolution will shortly be embarking on a year-long project in collaboration with MFO, Micro Finance Opportunities, and BRAC. In preparation for our work, I started to read more about microfinance and I also booked a tour with Envia in Oaxaca, Mexico so I could hear stories directly from the beneficiaries of microloans.

Advocates of microfinance include former Chief Economist at the World Bank, Joseph Stiglitz, author of Making Globalisation Work. Stiglitz sets out the importance of community involvement in development projects. He says that the microfinance model pioneered by Grameen in Bangladesh is successful because it addresses the needs of the communities which it serves. Their loan schemes work because groups of women take responsibility for each other and support one another in the loan repayment process.

But microfinance has its critics as well. Ha-Joon Chang, author of 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism says ‘If effective entrepreneurship ever was a purely individual thing, it has stopped being so at least for the last century. The collective ability to build and manage effective organizations and institutions is now far more important than the drives or even the talents of a nation’s individual members in determining its prosperity. Unless we reject the myth of heroic individual entrepreneurs and help them build institutions and organizations of collective entrepreneurship, we will never see the poor counties grow out of poverty on a sustainable basis.’

Chang illustrates the problem with an example of a Croatian farmer who buys a cow on microcredit. This farmer has to sell the milk from the cow, even if the bottom is falling out of the local milk market and prices are plummeting because hundreds of other farmers have taken out loans and are selling more milk. It is impossible for the farmer to turn himself into an exporter of butter or cheese as they don’t have the technology, organisational skills or capital.   ‘What makes rich countries rich is their ability to channel the individual entrepreneurial energy into collective entrepreneurship’ says Chang.

Looking specifically at the Mexican context, a study by Poverty Action Lab into the impact of microcredit for women in Mexico found that microcredit increased access to formal financial services which helped businesses to manage their cash flow and enabled some existing businesses to expand. However, it did not increase household income, business profitability or prompt new business creation. It was found that most of the loans made by microfinance organisations were used to make up for a shortfall in income due to unexpected circumstances such as weddings, or the need to buy medicine for a family member.

I realised quite early on in my research that not all microfinance organisations are set up as not-for-profits. Microfinance is big business in Mexico.

Institutions which started out providing affordable credit to the poor have burgeoned into large commercial institutions. The average interest rate for a microloan in Mexico is 74%, with many loans incurring 200% interest per annum.   It’s no wonder that 28% of microfinance borrowers in Mexico hold over 4 loans, and 11% hold over 6 loans, often all with different microfinance institutions. Instead of helping to raise borrowers out of poverty, these loans plunge them into a spiral of debt, from which the only temporary relief is another loan to pay off the existing loans. These rates are partly the result of the decentralised nature of microcredit lending, but institutions also argue that it is because of the high risk of lending to people with no credit history.

But, are the rural poor such a high risk? Joseph Stiglitz says that Grameen Bank in Bangladesh who give small loans to rural women found they had a far higher repayment rate than rich urban borrowers.

Before visiting the Zapotec community of San Miguel del Valle to meet the recipients of microloans, I asked Envia more about how they operate and what interest rate they are charging to their borrowers.

Envia was founded in 2010 and is currently run by four staff and a team of volunteers. Envia’s model is to provide interest-free loans which are funded through responsible tourism, such as the tour I took to meet the loan recipients. Envia’s tours are, in fact, the no.1 excursion in Oaxaca on Tripadvisor and certainly provide an authentic experience, as well as a unique insight the life and work of rural Zapotec women.

100% of the money raised from tours is put towards loans. Once this is repaid, the money is used for a second round of loans, and finally a third round of loans, education programmes and salaries. So the income from the tours is effectively recycled through the beneficiary communities 2.5 times. 340 women are being supported in six communities, with 2000 microloans distributed to date.

Envia lends exclusively to women as they are far more likely to invest in ways which benefit the family and, by extension, the community. As with the model in Bangladesh, at Envia the women also take responsibility for each other and in order to participate they have to form a group of three.

Before receiving the loan, the group of women take an eight part training course over 3 or 4 weeks within their community. This covers issues such as financial literacy, how to separate business and personal money, and how to calculate profit. Each of the three women will receive their own loan of 1500 pesos and must pay it back at either 100 pesos over 15 weeks or 150 pesos over 10 weeks. They can only proceed to the next level of loans once everyone in the group has paid back their loan. The next loan levels are 2500, 3500 and 4500 pesos and the women can decide their own repayment rate.

Women must attend weekly meetings within their communities and pay the loan back on a weekly basis. If, for any reason, they find themselves in financial difficulaties and are unable to repay their loan on a particular week, they are asked to make a minimal 20 peso contribution to show their commitment. If a woman doesn’t attend the weekly meeting, and doesn’t send her money with another member of her group, all three members of the group receive a 20 peso ($1) fine. The carrot and stick approach combining the support of group members with financial penalties clearly works well for Envia as they have a 99% repayment rate.

Another difference between the commercial microloan lenders in Mexico and Envia are the free educational programmes to help the women to grow their businesses. The women must participate in monthly business workshops which teach them about profit, promotion, PR, goal setting, branding and design. Other free classes include health, English, composting, computer skills and menopause – all of which are open to all members of the community.

Epifania Hernandez makes aprons. She is in a group with two other women. The first runs a small restaurant in San Miguel del Valle, where I enjoyed a delicious lunch. She is using her loan to buy the ingredients she needs for the restaurant in bulk, thus reducing her costs. The second runs a bakery and is likewise using the loans to purchase ingredients in larger quantities and to visit neighbouring towns to sell her rolls and empanadas. Even though I had just finished lunch, the fresh-out-the-oven bread was impossible to resist and I bought more to take back to my apartment for breakfast the next day.

In the Zapotec communities around Oaxaca, aprons are worn every day and form an integral and practical part of traditional dress. Epifania explains that there are fashions in apron design (current hot motifs include peacocks and grapes) and there is a skill in combining apron and dress colours together.

Epifania has been making aprons for 14 years and started work at the age of 14. She wasn’t that interested in school; embroidery was much more enticing. It will take her two to three days to make and embroider each of her beautiful aprons.

Epifania has been with Envia for a year and is now on her third loan which is for 3500 pesos. She uses the money to buy stocks of fabric and embroidery threads. If she has a good stock, people can choose their colour scheme when they order aprons from her, and this is increasing her clientele.

For Epifania, and the other two women I met on the tour, microfinance was working. For all three of the women, it provided a way to expand their businesses whilst reducing their costs as the loans were used to buy raw materials in larger quantities than they would otherwise have been able to afford.

Of course, the zero interest repayment on the loans is not something which many lending institutions, even those with the most benevolent of aims, can replicate. But the high repayment rate through several loan cycles, show that these rural women can be a good credit risk and would probably continue to be a good credit risk with nominal interest rates. The coupling of microloans with business education is another important factor in Envia’s success in helping the women to build sustainable businesses for the long term.

Chang criticises micro finance as he says that, in order to grow sustainably, countries need to channel individual entrepreneurial energy into collective entrepreneurship. However, community-based model of Envia is an example of collective entrepreneurship. Although loans are given individually, the women collaborate with other members of their community and they work together, supported by the educational programme, to explore ways to expand their business and take it to the next level.

Envia was only established six years ago and the long term success of this tourism-financed business model is yet to be seen. However, from an outsider’s perspective it certainly seems to be working, both for the enthusiastic overseas visitors who have the opportunity to understand how rural women live in this region and purchase direct from the producers, and for the 340 women in the Oaxaca region who are beneficiaries of Envia loans.

Administered in a sustainable manner, microfinance can undoubtedly be a powerful instrument of social change and empowerment for women in rural communities around the world. Microfinance can help to increase women’s financial, social and emotional independence, as well as improving their status within both their families and their community.

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).

Nepal is a country not only  brimming with color and life but also with opportunity. It is in a small town, Pokhara, the Women’s Skill Development Organization (WSDO) thrives. The WSDO is a non-profit organization that was born out of Nepal’s rich heritage of traditional handicrafts. Started in 1975, the WSDO specializes in handcrafted cotton products. It is a completely self-sufficient organization with a purpose: providing handicraft related training and skills to underprivileged women so that they may become self-reliant.

Many of these women come from rural villages and have been widowed, divorced, handicapped, abused and estranged from their homes and villages. WSDO provides training in various areas of handicraft production such as dying, weaving, material cutting, sewing and even business management. It is with these skills that the women and their families may have a better quality of life. Today, Handwoven with Love partners with the WSDO in order to sell their survivor artisan wares to a greater global market.

The WSDO has given countless women a chance for economic independence and a renewed sense of hope. Here Chari, one these incredible women, shares her story…

Where were you born?

I was born in Khumaltar, Nepal into a farmers’ family. I was married at 14, also when I had my first son.

How did it feel being married so young?

My first husband passed away only three years after our wedding. I worked as a farm labourer to support my son until I met my second husband in 1973. Even though we both worked on the farm, it was not enough to take care of the family. In 1988, in search of better opportunity, we moved to Pokhara with my family, bigger now. I had now two sons, two daughters, and my husband who had slowly adopted the habits of alcohol. It was very difficult for me to raise my children with my only income. I had no choice but to beg. I hated begging. I also became sick but could not understand what was wrong. My husband drank and beat my children and me. Because I could not feed my family with my income my husband ignored us all.

How did that make you feel?

I was very unhappy and tried to commit suicide by jumping from Mahendra Bridge of Pokhara. I could not do it because of my children.

What happened next?

I was with my neighbor sharing my health concern and she suggested I visit the Green Pasture Leprosy Hospital in Pokhara for check up. I came to know about my leprosy after years of its attack on my body. After medication at the hospital, one day they took all patients to visit the WSDO.

How did you feel when you first visited the WSDO?

I was inspired by the organization. It provides training and a job to women.

Is that what made you decide to be a part of the WSDO?

I decided to be part of WSDO to­ earn money for my children and myself. I joined the organization and started weaving. My children help with the house as I weave with WSDO.

Where do you stand today?

I have managed to do everything through weaving at the organization and now can save some money too. I am 57 years old and cannot work on a farm like before. My husband died. Since being a part of the organization my life has improved a lot. I do not have to move from one place to another in search of a job. I have a job that is steady and I am grateful to WSDO for helping bring this change to my life.

What is the best part of your life today?

Being a part of the organization I get chances to travel and see different places and people. This is the most enjoyable thing. I hope to encourage and inspire all suffering women.

To learn more about and shop Handwoven with Love, visit To the Market here

With thanks to To The Market and Ashley Rose Carney, Founder of Handwoven with Love and Partner of the Women’s Skill Development Organization

In 1908, 15,000 women marched through New York City to demand shorter working hours, better pay and voting rights. This was the beginning of a movement from which International Women’s Day was born. Decades later, in 2011, the United Nations marked the 11^th of October as the first International Day of the Girl Child, highlighting the continuing challenges which young girls still face in communities across the globe; especially in relation to accessing education, being safe from violence and exploitation. Within the fashion industry, the pressure to meet the demands of conventional fast fashion companies is enormous. To stay competitive, manufacturing factories keep their overheads low by paying low wages for workers. Child labourers can be paid even less and are an attractive proposition for employers. Parents are forced to send their children, including young girls to work in conditions which are unsafe in order to create enough income to sustain the family.

As a Fair Trade company, People Tree works with many social businesses who not only create decent employment and pay fair wages, but who also invest in their local community. For example, by funding schools, medical support and awareness raising on the rights of women and girls. We support communities in India, Bangladesh and Nepal who empower girls by giving them access to education and vocational training. By focusing on empowerment of women through dignified and artisanal work, we help keep handicraft traditions alive, as well as offer opportunities to help strengthen these communities and continue to support their learning and development. Equal opportunities are reflected throughout People Tree’s supply chain, where 56% of leadership roles are held by women.

In rural Bangladesh, girls are often not given opportunities to go to school, instead they are encouraged to stay at home to help around the house and to get married very young. People Tree works with Swallows, an NGO set up to empower the poor and underprivileged population, especially women, in the village of Thanapara. Swallows runs a handicrafts program which makes beautiful hand woven and hand embroidered garments. This business helps to fund Swallows’ development work in the local area, and the empowerment of girls and women is central to their work.

Mrs Gini Ali, Assistant Director at Swallows, feels that discrimination and lack of opportunity for women in Bangladesh are the biggest barriers to improving living conditions there. She says:

“The Fair Trade principles applied by People Tree have created economic stability for Swallows, allowing it to become an independent organisation, this has led to the empowerment of the women of Thanapara.”

Swallows funds schools and awareness raising to ensure that girls have the same chance to study as boys. They raise awareness amongst parents, sharing the importance of education for young girls and its benefits for the family and the community. As well as sharing the importance of education, Swallows raises awareness around the issue of child marriage and the negative impacts this can have. Swallows provides free training opportunities for young women and also sponsor young women to study part time whilst the work part time making Fair Trade clothing. As well as this they offer legal support to local women who are victims of domestic violence and raise awareness locally on the issue.

In Nepal, People Tree partners with Kumbeshwar Technical School (KTS). Originally set up as a vocational training centre, KTS has now developed into a Fair Trade business creating beautiful hand knitted products. Established in 1983 with the goal of breaking societal barriers created by Nepal’s caste system, KTS was set up to help Pode people, the so-called ‘untouchable’ caste in Nepal. Those born into the Pode caste are expected to clean the sewers and streets of the areas inhabited by higher castes for no more than scraps of leftover food. The discrimination which keeps these people out of other forms of work even affects children, who may drop out of primary school because they are unable to fit in. Until recently, Pode children did not go to school at all.

KTS now offers employment to 2,273 women who come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. On top of this, the profits from Fair Trade helps fund vocational training; a school; a day care centre for over 250 children from low income families and an orphanage.

Both KTS and Swallows are both ‘Guaranteed Fair Trade Organisations’ by the World Fair Trade Organisation (WFTO). This recognises that the whole of the company is 100% dedicated to Fair Trade and ensures that all the groups adhere to the WFTO’s 10 Fair Trade Principles. Key to these 10 principles is Principle Six: ‘Commitment to Non Discrimination, Gender Equity and Women’s Economic Empowerment’. At People Tree we believe that Fair Trade business is a key driver in the empowerment of women and girls worldwide.

For more information about how People Tree supports women and girls, please contact us for a copy of our Social Review and read about People Tree’s latest Campaign Against Child Labour in our digital edition of the Eco-Edit: http://www.peopletree.co.uk/eco-edit

The garment industry is and has historically been one of the most female-dominated industries in the world. Today, more than 70% of garment workers in China are women, in Bangladesh the share is 85%, and in Cambodia as high as 90%^[i]. For these women, development is closely linked to their conditions at work. It’s about gaining a decent pay, working under dignified conditions and having basic work security. It’s about moving out of poverty, being able to provide children with education, and to become more independent and grow as an individual.

The reality for most garment workers in the Global South is far from here. Although producing for some of the most profitable companies in the world, they are working for poverty wages, under dreadful conditions, and they have to undertake an excessive amount of overtime. In Bangladesh (the world’s second largest exporter of clothes) the minimum wage for garment workers is 5,300 taka (£45/€62) per month which is far from the 8,900 taka (£75/€104) that are needed to cover a worker’s basic needs, and even further away from a living wage. Many garment workers are working between 60 and 140 hours of overtime per week and it is common to be cheated of the overtime pay. Health and safety are often neglected, workers are denied breaks, and abuses are common – to mention a few of the problems in the industry^[ii].

Yet, there are some who argue that this exploitation is the road to female empowerment. Historically, women’s integration into paid work has been one of the important forces to emancipation and growing gender equality. Liberal writers such as Leslie T. Chang, argue that the globalised garment industry has had this empowering effect as women from poor backgrounds are able to find work and earn a salary^[iii]. In similar vein, social economist Naila Kabeer emphasises how work in the garment industry has allowed women in Bangladesh to gain recognition for their economic contribution for the family, and that garment workers tend to be more conscious about their rights and have a more critical mindset than other women^[iv].

These gains are important to recognise. Still, there are reasons to be sceptical about the transformative potential that garment work has for women in the Global South. Firstly, it is important to understand the way in which women have been integrated to the industry. In the neoliberal deregulated global economy, developing countries are competing to produce for multinational brands by offering the lowest costs and the fastest and most flexible production. In a labour-intensive industry such as garment, this is mainly achieved by making labour cheaper and more flexible, that is, by paying lower salaries, push for longer hours, and reducing work and environmental standards.

Women’s integration to the garment factories has played a crucial role in this process. Factory owners have been taken advantage of women’s unequal position in society to form an even cheaper, more docile and flexible work force. So, rather than challenge their subordination in society, work in the garment industry is reproducing it. Women tend to earn significantly less than men, they face systematic discrimination, and they are only able to access the lowest paid jobs with very poor prospects for promotion. Many of them have low work security, and if they are not prepared to work on the terms set out by their employers they run the risk of losing their jobs^[v].

The exploitation of women workers has allowed European fashion companies to make huge profits while denying the workers who produce their clothes the most basic rights. By outsourcing production, these companies are able to both step away from their responsibility and to play producers against each other to get the best and most profitable deal. The deregulated nature of the global economy makes worker’s legal protection very thin and their right to organise and bargain collectively is constantly restricted.

Despite these challenges, there are many women who are mobilising into unions and other labour movements to challenge the inequalities and exploitation in the garment industry. From Bangladesh, to Cambodia and Honduras, workers are defying threats, violence, social oppression and powerful capitalist forces in order to defend their basic rights. Their struggle is key for the development of the workers, their families and whole societies. It also has an important empowering effect for women who commonly are marginalised and discouraged to act politically. This could allow real emancipatory change for women and the chance to move out of poverty and become stronger, more independent individuals.

The citizens of Europe have an important part to play in their struggle. Garment workers need resources and support to confront the powerful forces that they are up against, and there are many organisations that are working on these issues, including Clean Clothes Campaign, War on Want and TRAID. By supporting them we can make an important contribution for the garment workers’ fight. We can also act in solidarity with garment workers by putting pressure on the European firms – notably to pay up for the production and ensure that production is not going to be moved to a new location if labour prices go up. Toothless CSR policies are not enough. We need real commitments from fashion companies and they have to stop counteracting the struggle of garment workers.

Moreover, we must campaign for changes in the global garment industry to stop large fashion retailers from playing producers against each other. Profits can no longer come to any price. Ethics and the environment have to be brought into the centre of the debate and we need to show that, as European citizens, we do not accept the violations that are taking place in the garment industry. European fashion brands should become accountable for the human rights abuses that are taking place in their supply chains, and they should be obliged to ensure that fair wages and work conditions are met. Organisations such as CORE and European Coalition for Corporate Justice are currently campaigning for these changes on national and EU levels, and by supporting them we can make their campaigns grown larger.

Coming back to the initial question of development, the garment industry could have a great potential as an emancipatory force for women in the Global South. However, as we have seen, work in in itself is not sufficient for creating development and challenge gender inequality – the nature of work is as important and this has to be urgently reconsidered. The most important source for that change comes from the garment workers themselves, but the people in Europe has an important role to play by supporting their struggle and campaigning for legislative change on the national and EU levels. Together we can build strength and push for a fairer and sustainable fashion industry.

Emilie Schultze, MSc graduate in Development Studies, SOAS University of London

Photo credits: Rainbow Collective

^[i] Rock M. (2001) p. 34 in ‘The rise of the Bangladesh Independent Garment Workers’ Union (BIGU)’ in Hutchison J. and Brown A. (eds.) Organising Labour in Globalising Asia, London and New York: Routledge; Hilary J. (2013) p. 110 in ‘The Poverty of Capitalism: Economic Meltdown and the Struggle for What Comes Next’, Pluto Press: London

^[ii] Bloomberg, Bangladesh raises minimum wage for garment workers after unrest. Available at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-11-13/bangladesh-garment-factories-to-stay-shut-amid-worker-protests

War on Want (2011) p. 4 in Stitched Up: Women workers in the Bangladeshi garment sector, London: War on Want

^[iii] Chang L. Ted Talk, The Voices of China’s Workers. Available at https://www.ted.com/talks/leslie_t_chang_the_voices_of_china_s_workers?language=en

^[iv] Swedwatch (2012) p. 23-24, A Lost Revolution? Empowered but Trapped in Poverty. Women in the Garment Industry in Bangladesh Want More, Stockholm

^[v] WIEGO website, Garment Workers. Available at: http://wiego.org/informal-economy/occupational-groups/garment-workers