Preparing Women for Leadership in Garment Production: Early Career Interventions

孟加拉国服装部门的400万工人中绝大多数是女性，但各级管理人员几乎都是男性。在一系列项目中，我们研究了将妇女转变为监督角色的挑战。第一个项目由国际发展部-欧洲社会研究中心增长研究方案（ES/J 009466/1）资助。我们的研究帮助工厂选择更好的女性候选人担任主管职位，帮助培训提供者完善培训内容，并导致该行业女性主管的增加。来自44家项目工厂的长期跟踪数据显示，2016年至2017年间，女性主管的比例从4%增加到8%以上。在这个项目中，我们的目标是建立在女性领导力的势头和从早期研究中吸取的经验教训的基础上，帮助培训提供者在更长的培训窗口中提供更有效的培训，同时让女性从职业生涯的早期就为领导职位做好准备。我们将评估一个试点培训方案，该方案旨在对妇女在该部门的职业生涯进行早期干预，培训时间较长。我们的目标是了解早期和更持续的干预是否会促使妇女更多地投资于成为有效主管所需的技能;增加她们担任主管时的信心;增加工厂和部门的保留率;并使她们在晋升后成为更有效的主管。我们将与工厂合作，确定培训计划的候选人，并与培训师合作，定制培训计划，涵盖软技能-领导力，沟通和信心-以及硬技能-生产线平衡，绩效评估等。这项研究将有利于服装行业的生产商和买家。如果评估表明培训带来的好处超过了成本，我们希望传播结果，导致培训计划或其中的一部分被采纳，成为工厂为女工提供的管理技能发展的典型内部培训。此外，对该方案的详细分析将为管理人员提供有关晋升妇女的挑战和障碍的见解。我们期望该项目将鼓励工厂管理层考虑提拔妇女。与工厂合作的外部培训机构，如Sudoko或BetterWork，如果被认为成功，也可能有兴趣将部分或全部培训内容纳入其课程。

The overwhelming majority of the 4 million workers in the Bangladeshi garment sector are female, but managers at all levels are almost exclusively male. In a series of projects, we have examined the challenges of transitioning women into supervisory roles. The first of the projects was funded through the DfID-ESRC Growth Research Program (ES/J009466/1). Our research has helped factories select better female candidates for supervisory positions, helped training providers hone the content of their training, and led to an increase in female supervisors in the sector. Long-term follow-up data from 44 project factories indicates that the percentage of female supervisors doubled from four percent to over eight percent between 2016 and 2017. In this project, we aim to build on both the momentum toward female leadership and the lessons learned from the earlier research to help training providers deliver more effective training over a longer training window, while preparing women for leadership positions from an early point in their careers. We will evaluate a pilot training program that aims to intervene earlier in the women's career in the sector, with training spread over a longer period of time. We aim to understand if the earlier and more sustained intervention induces women to invest more in the skills necessary to be effective supervisors; increases their confidence when they are working as supervisors; increases retention rates in the factory and sector; and makes them more effective supervisors after they are promoted. We will work with factories to identify candidates for the training program and work with trainers to customise a training program covering both soft skills - leadership, communication and confidence - and hard skills - line balancing, performance measurement, etc. Training will be spread over a period of one year, with half-day sessions fortnightly. The research will benefit garment sector producers and buyers. If the evaluation demonstrates that the training provides benefits that exceed its costs, we would expect dissemination of the results to lead to adoption of the training program, or parts of it, into the typical in-house training that factories provide for supervisor skills development for female workers. Moreover, the detailed analysis of the program will provide insights to the challenges and barriers to promoting women that will be useful to management personnel. We expect the project will encourage factory management to consider women for promotion. External training agencies that work with factories, such as Suddoko or BetterWork, may also be interested in incorporating some, or all, of the training components into their curriculum if deemed successful.