Gender and Fast Fashion: The Feminization and Globalization of Garment Labor
There was a point in time where women were expected to do nothing but learn to play the pianoforte, become well acquainted with painting or drawing, and submit to the expectations of a homemaker. However, in the mid to late ‘90s and early ‘00s, women became a new source of inexpensive, “flexible,” and “passive” labor. According to Harriot Beazley and Vandana Desai in The Companion to Development Studies; Gender and Globalization, this is because women were more likely to manage well in mundane environments doing repetitive tasks. This was when the globalization of transnational (TNC) and multinational companies that produced clothing, shoes, accessories—pretty much anything you could find in your closet—became the norm. Expansion to countries overseas meant cheaper labor and no established unions or worker rights—the perfect target for capitalism.
While globalization is defined as a complex process involving the social, political, and cultural approaches to mobilizing ideas and practices on a global scale, in Valentine M. Moghadam’s Gender and Globalization: Female Labor and Women’s Mobilization, she asserts that economic globalization operates on a quicker agenda with more efficient transactions between economies. This is why today there are many women in South, Southeast, and East Asia who work in sweatshops for companies like H&M, Forever 21, and GAP.
Of course, these garment work job openings were marketed to Asian women as opportunities—a way for them to support their parents’ household income and rise in the social hierarchy of their homes and families. Women were, and still are, heavily reliant on the availability of garment work, and TNCs were keen to take advantage of this need. According to Cultural Survival Quarterly Magazine, women who enter the labor force in developing countries tend to do so for survival. They aren’t likely to be independent women separate from their families as one would imagine. They are still working to support their parents, and they are entering workforces that reward them with little pay and little respect. Once these young women become married, pregnant, or sick due to a work-related illness, they are often let go. Growing old doesn’t help one’s case for entering the garment workforce, either.
However, writer Leslie T. Chang argues in her TED Talk, “The Voices of China’s Workers,” that these opportunities are good for women and their advancement in society and in the workforce. TNC’s expansion, while targeting women of lower-income classes overseas, does really enable and empower these women. So then, what else could be so wrong with the feminization of labor and the globalization of TNCs?
Aforementioned, sweatshop and factory expansion overseas meant no established unions or worker rights. In Factory Daughters: Gender, Household Dynamics, and Rural Industrialization in Java, Diane Wolf notes that the women employed in sweatshops are subject to inhumane working conditions, and “strong discipline” was given to those who complained about said conditions. Wolf found numerous health and safety regulations, ones that have led to countless reports of injuries and deaths found in the news today.
Just one of the tragedies took place in May of 2013, according to BBC News. An eight story factory in Bangladesh collapsed with an unknown amount of sweatshop workers still inside, and only 2,437 people were rescued. Over 1,000 workers died, and in result, protesters took to the streets to fight for the lives that were lost. The factory had been evacuated because of cracks appearing on the walls, but workers were welcomed back to work shortly. In another case, just four years later also in Bangladesh, European textile company Multifabs owned one of the 4,500 garment factories in the country—one with a faulty boiler that blew up the entirety of the structure, killing 13 and injuring 50 in 2017. At the time, four million women worked in garment factories, earning just $68 a month. The most recent factory accident occurred in December of 2019, just nine months ago. A factory fire killed 43 Indian sweatshop workers in New Delhi. Reuters stated that the accident prompted stricter labor rules to prevent illegal factories from putting thousands of migrant workers at risk, but no notable changes have been made to these laws since.
These are just a few of the incidents that have taken place at the hands of TNCs and multinational corporations that have resulted in a profound number of deaths and injuries alone; not exclusive to women, but considering that women do make up the majority of sweatshop and factory workforces, it can be assumed that they were likely more female injuries and deaths. They are on the frontlines in a literal sense, working with the knowledge that their beings are not valued or protected in their places of work.
On top of inhumane conditions, gender discrimination is a feat women all over the world, in all lines of work unfortunately face. In garment work especially, there is a “fundamental lack of recognition of women's skills not only sets their value and income at low levels,” says Tara Fenwick in Women Learning in Garment Work: Solidarity and Sociality. “It also can render them effectively faceless and voiceless: they become interchangeable machine operators in a denial of their subjectivity, their personal knowledge, and struggles.”
Endless reports of sexual assault involving male higher-ups mistreating the women who work below them are just one major extension of gender discrimination in the workplace. In Sexual Harassment in the Workplace: A Report from Field Research in Thailand, researcher Ubon Kompipote found that 90% of the respondents admitted that their employment conditions do not protect female workers from sexual harassment, over 90% of the respondents are unfamiliar with the concept of a workplace code of conduct, and most women working in Thailand sweatshops do not have a common understanding of what constitutes sexual harassment. In turn, they often ignore the acts that are damaging to them. So, what happens exactly when sexual harassment takes place, and when a woman takes initiative to speak out against it or report it?
In most cases, women know not to attempt even telling their families about the harassment, as working in garment factories is seen as a privilege their parents must consent to, and telling them may put their ability to work on the line, according to an article published by Human Rights Watch. Beazley and Desai found that women would lose their jobs when reporting the incidents, or in extreme cases, would be kidnapped and murdered, especially if the woman were to spearhead the increasing awareness of female exploitation and harassment among her fellow colleagues, such as activist Marisnah who suffered the undeserving fate.
To combat this injustice, there have been multiple non-governmental organizations, non-profits, and initiatives worldwide that have prioritized providing the education and unionization tools to disadvantaged women in the garment industry. These organizations include but are not limited to:
Labour Behind the Label, the only UK campaign group that brings public awareness to garment workers’ struggles.
The Fashion Revolution Foundation, a global movement that is “action oriented and solution focused” that raises money for garment workers through partnerships and community engagements.
Remake, a community of millennial and Gen Z women who have pledged to actively challenge fast fashion and inform others of its repercussions in order to put an end to it.
Asia Floor Wage Alliance, an Asian labour-led global labor and social alliance across garment producing countries in South and Southeast Asia that addresses poverty level wages and gender discrimination specifically.
All of the above organizations can be scoured for more information on the movement to protect and empower garment workers, especially female garment workers. They also offer great insight into how you can get involved in the movement remotely, and how you can implement slow fashion practices into your lifestyle. In the next installment of Gender and Fast Fashion, we’ll be dissecting the fight for female garment worker rights and safety, how it has progressed over just the past few years, and what it’s accomplished thus far. Stay tuned!
