Invisible Women, Invisible Workers: Focusing a gendered lens on health and safety in the global garment industry

看不见的女性，看不见的工人：从性别角度关注全球服装行业的健康和安全

• 批准号: MR/W013797/1
• 负责人: Sabina Lawreniuk
• 金额: $ 167.63万
• 依托单位: University of Nottingham
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Fellowship
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=MR%2FW013797%2F1
• 关键词: Invisible; Women; Workers; Focusing; gendered

"Fast fashion should worry all of us" was The Guardian newspaper's provocative headline calling for an international response to the exploitation of workers in global garments and footwear manufacturing. Worldwide, 70 million people work producing clothing and shoes, mostly in developing countries but also in advanced economies like the UK. 80% of these workers are women. The industry is worth US$2 trillion per year, yet workers receive poverty wages to live and work in dangerous conditions. In 2014, for example, over 1000 workers in Bangladesh were crushed to death in a factory collapse, highlighting the prioritisation of profit at the expense of people.Although workers in supply chains are vital to our everyday lives, we know very little about the women who make our clothes and shoes. The UK government's Work and Opportunities for Women programme highlights urgent concern that there is a lack of systemic collection and reporting of gender-disaggregated data by companies and other organisations involved in managing global supply chains. Women workers in supply chains are simply invisible workers. Sustainable Development Goal 8.8 targets "safe and secure working environments for all workers". Yet without systemic data the problems that lessen women's quality of life in the garment industry are not fully known and are therefore are hard to address. This Future Leaders Fellowship addresses this knowledge and practice gap by generating evidence and promoting action on the specific threats posed to female garment workers. In the global South, as well as the UK, most garment workers are young women from poor households, often living far away from home. Building on a commitment from the International Labour Organisation to eradicate gendered violence in "the world of work" (Convention 190, 2019), including acknowledging threats that occur beyond the workplace, we will evidence the risks that women workers face inside and outside of the factory, where malnutrition, mass fainting, reproductive and mental health crises, and sexual and physical abuse are reported to be commonplace. Using feminist theory and methods, we aim to highlight and challenge where gender-blind health and safety programmes hide or ignore these pervasive threats to women's wellbeing.We focus on four producer countries that represent different sites in the evolution of supply chain outsourcing: Cambodia, Ethiopia, Jordan and the UK. Across these locations, a combined 1 million people work making clothes and shoes for leading UK brands including M&S, Topshop and ASOS. Bringing together a diverse and transdisciplinary team, the project uses a participatory and ethnographic approach to investigate women's health and wellbeing at 8 industrial sites in each country, before examining the (inter)national organisation of labour and trade governance, to understand the institutional processes that make and unmake healthy working bodies. Our global approach allows us to identify the complex, more-than-local factors that perpetuate women's vulnerability in garment work and target action to address the systemic causes of inequity within supply chains.To ensure our project amplifies women workers, we are collaborating with global partners and advisors, including international organisations (ILO/IFC Better Work), labour rights advocates (Worker Rights Consortium), women's rights charities (Care), trade justice campaigns (Traidcraft Exchange) and social movements (Fashion Revolution). We will share our findings in 10 academic papers, 6 interim briefs, 4 local workshops and exhibitions, and an accessibly written final report and monograph. Our initial phase of research for impact culminates in a global launch and exhibition of outputs at Fashion Revolution Week in 2025, intended to counter the invisibility of women workers, generating media attention to galvanise policy and public support for transformative change towards just garment supply chains.

《卫报》挑衅性的标题是《快时尚应该让我们所有人担心》，呼吁国际社会对全球服装和鞋类制造业工人受到的剥削做出回应。在全球范围内，有7000万人从事服装和鞋子的生产，主要在发展中国家，但也有英国等发达经济体。这些工人中有80%是女性。该行业每年价值2万亿美元，但工人在危险的条件下生活和工作却只得到微薄的工资。例如，2014年，孟加拉国有1000多名工人在工厂倒塌中被压死，这突显了以人为本的利润优先。尽管供应链中的工人对我们的日常生活至关重要，但我们对为我们制造衣服和鞋子的女性知之甚少。英国政府的妇女工作和机会计划突显了人们的迫切关切，即参与管理全球供应链的公司和其他组织缺乏系统地收集和报告按性别分类的数据。供应链中的女工简直就是隐形工人。可持续发展目标8.8的目标是“为所有工人提供安全可靠的工作环境”。然而，在没有系统数据的情况下，降低服装业女性生活质量的问题并不是完全清楚的，因此很难解决。未来领袖联谊会通过提供证据并促进对制衣女工构成的具体威胁采取行动，解决了这一知识和实践上的差距。在全球南方和英国，大多数制衣工人都是来自贫困家庭的年轻女性，她们往往住在离家很远的地方。根据国际劳工组织的承诺，消除“工作场所”中的性别暴力(2019年第190号公约)，包括承认工作场所以外的威胁，我们将证明女工在工厂内外面临的风险，据报道，营养不良、大规模晕倒、生殖和心理健康危机以及性和身体虐待在工厂司空见惯。运用女权主义理论和方法，我们旨在强调和挑战性别盲目的健康和安全计划隐藏或忽视这些对女性福祉的普遍威胁的地方。我们关注代表供应链外包演变中不同地点的四个生产国：柬埔寨、埃塞俄比亚、约旦和英国。在这些地点，总共有100万人为M&S、Topshop和ASOS等英国领先品牌制作服装和鞋子。该项目汇集了一个多样化和跨学科的团队，采用参与性和人种学方法在每个国家的8个工业场所调查妇女的健康和福祉，然后审查(国际)国家劳工和贸易治理组织，以了解建立和破坏健康工作机构的体制过程。我们的全球方法使我们能够识别导致女性在服装工作中长期脆弱的复杂、而不是本地的因素，并有针对性地采取行动，解决供应链中不公平的系统性原因。为了确保我们的项目扩大女性工人，我们正在与全球合作伙伴和顾问合作，包括国际组织(国际劳工组织/国际金融公司更好地工作)、劳工权利倡导者(工人权利联盟)、妇女权利慈善机构(关怀)、贸易正义运动(Traidraft Exchange)和社会运动(时尚革命)。我们将在10篇学术论文、6份临时简报、4个本地研讨会和展览以及一份通俗易懂的期末报告和专著中分享我们的发现。我们对Impact的第一阶段研究最终将在2025年的时尚革命周上推出并展示产品，旨在对抗女性工人的隐形，引发媒体关注，以激励政策和公众支持向公正的服装供应链转型。