Month: February 2022

WHY FASHION MATTERS

 

When you open your wardrobe to get dressed in the morning, social justice probably isn’t the first thing that springs to mind; but as one of the world’s largest industries, fashion has the power – and the responsibility – to transform the lives of millions of workers across the world. The apparel and textile sector is one of the largest industries in the world, and one that we all take part in, whether you buy your clothes online or in store, and from couture to fast fashion. Fashion cuts across so many of the Global Goals: from Gender Equality (5) and Decent Work (8) for the millions of people working in textile and garment factories to the responsibility of brands and buyers to adhere to the principles of Sustainable Consumption and Production (12).

While globalisation and increasing interdependence between countries all over the world has led to greater cooperation, opportunities and development in many cases, the impact on global production and consumption has left many millions of people behind: in low paid jobs in unhealthy and sometimes dangerous environments, and with little power to demand employers hold up their human rights.

Everyone should have access to full employment and decent work, without fear of insecurity, exclusion and inequality – and the fashion industry is no exception..

 

“Fast fashion isn’t free. Someone, somewhere is paying” – Lucy Siegle, journalist

 

Fast fashion has become a hot topic in many countries, with consumers and producers alike becoming more conscious of the negative connotations it has, from its reliance on underpaid labour through to unsafe factories, and environmental degradation – issues that fall under the Goals of No Poverty (1), Decent Work and Life on Land (15). It’s easy to put fashion’s glaring social justice problems at the door of fast fashion, but the problems aren’t exclusive to cheap clothes. Luxury brands are some of the worst offenders when it comes to supply chains that rely on exploitation.

Globally, we are buying more clothes than ever before – 60% more than we were two decades ago – so brands at both ends of the price spectrum compete to produce new collections at faster rates, in turn driving competition between factories in the supply chain to turn around garments at speed, often at the cost of workers’ rights and safety.

Image: Rio Lecatompessy

 

“There is no beauty in the finest cloth if it makes hunger and unhappiness” – Mahatma Gandhi

 

The pandemic has only served to make the lives of the millions of vulnerable workers in the fashion industry even more difficult: unpaid wages, union busting and mass firings have been the response of many companies – often with revenues running into the millions – when retailers cancelled orders for goods that had already been made. Workers who managed to keep their jobs were forced to choose between catching Covid or missing out on wages, with those who did catch Covid not granted sick pay.

Brands, retailers and factories must shoulder the responsibility of addressing fashion’s key issues: from bad contracts and poverty wages to the exploitation of migrant workers and gender discrimination, the industry cannot continue to make billions in profit from a model that monetises injustice. Furthermore, as consumers increasingly seek ethical and sustainable options when shopping for clothes, it is in the industry’s self-interest to revolutionise how those clothes are made.

 

“Demand quality not just in the products you buy, but in the life of the person who made it” — Orsola de Castro, designer and cofounder of Fashion Revolution

 

As consumers, we as individuals also have a responsibility to find out – where we can – who makes our clothes and howtheir lives are impacted by our choices. We can demand fair wages and safe working environments with the power of our wallets, choosing to shop with brands that commit fully to justice for their employees. We can also raise our voices by joining the Clean Clothes Campaign in telling the industry to pay workers, end forced labour and be transparent in who makes the clothes they sell. Today, and every day, consumers can show the fashion industry that social injustice is not a fair price for a new outfit.

The good news is that ethical practises in the production, selling and buying of garments can have a real impact on the many of the Global Goals: alleviating poverty and gender inequality, improving health outcomes, creating safe working environments, reducing inequalities, and taking climate action that protects life on land and below water. The fashion industry has a real opportunity to promote justice for both people and planet, so that we can all live healthier, happier, more sustainable lives – all while being well dressed.

 

This blog was written by Lydia Paynter, Comms and Campaigns Officer at Project Everyone.

 

Banner image: Arturo Rey

Today is the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. In many countries, the days of boys doing science experiments in one classroom while girls learn to cook and sew in another are long gone, but inequality in STEM (science, technology, maths, engineering) continues in other ways, as women in science receive less funding, are underrepresented in some of the most cutting edge fields, and have shorter careers.

Women have always been involved in science, but have always been left behind

History has no shortage of pioneering women who broke through social and scientific barriers. Rosalind Franklin contributed to the discovery of the structure of DNA. Katherine Johnson’s calculations were essential to NASA launching its first crewed space flights. Alice Augusta Ball developed a treatment for leprosy when she was just 23 years old, and was the first African American and first woman to be a professor at the University of Hawaii.

 

While these women – and the many who didn’t make it to the history books – show us that women can and should fully participate in science, the data shows us that we still have a long way to go. In the most groundbreaking fields – like artificial intelligence – only 1 in 5 professionals are women, and despite the urgent need for skilled STEM workers as the world enters the fourth industrial revolution, women make up only 28% of engineering graduates, and 40% of computer science graduates. When women do make it into STEM professions, they are still likely to be paid less, published less, and have shorter careers.

 

Caroline Waterlow, NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson and Ezra Edelman at the 89th Annual Academy Awards, Los Angeles | Featureflash Photo Agency

 

 

 

The problem isn’t just limited to the underrepresentation of women in the professional scientific world; at the user end of STEM (everything from medicines and seatbelts to endlessly long toilet queues) women and girls’ experiences and needs are often missed: side effects more commonly attributed to women aren’t picked up by clinical trials, crash test dummies are designed with male bodies as the archetype, and plumbing regulations designed primarily by men have resulted in public buildings where women have to queue for toilets much longer than their male counterparts. While the latter may seem like a frivolous problem, women are twice as likely to experience adverse reactions to drugs that aren’t designed with them in mind, and more likely to be killed in car accidents as seatbelts that fail to protect them.

 

 

 

STEM Heroines

So how do we solve this glaring inequality? Governments, academic institutions, tech companies, pharmaceutical companies, every industry, must ensure that women and girls are both the beneficiaries and agents of change.

We need more women on the forefront of research, like Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert and Dr Catherine Green, the leading researchers behind the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid vaccine. We need to fund amazing innovators like Judit Giró Benet, who designed a home testing kit for breast cancer. Like Alice Augusta Ball, Judith was just 23 years old when she decided to take on the challenge of a major disease. We need brilliant women with a love of all things maths and science, like Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon, to be elevated to the public eye so that girls at school know there is a place for them in STEM subjects.

 

Women in Science are the key to unlocking the Global Goals

Only with full access and equal participation in science can we ensure that women and girls are able to both benefit from and create the change that this field needs to go through in order to be fully inclusive and representative of everyone: science touches all our lives, from the food we eat, to the medicines we take and the transport we use. To achieve all the Global Goals – from eliminating hunger and disease and ensuring everyone has fresh drinking water, to connecting people everywhere to clean electricity while halting the climate crisis – we need the best scientific minds we can find, and we need them now: both men and women.

 

 

 

About the Author

This blog was written by Lydia Paynter, Comms and Campaigns Officer at Project Everyone.