Artistic Milliners on Why Fashion Needs to Focus on Women’s Equality
The pandemic has highlighted the need for social development in the apparel industry, but many of the areas for improvement existed before Covid-19 disrupted supply chains.
Fashion is working to address problems like hunger, poverty and well-being, which fall under the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. Interrelated with a number of these goals is SDG 5: Gender Equality, which is particularly important for the fashion industry.
Although garment work can provide an income and help lift women out of poverty, they may face labor rights violations and low pay. Additionally, 80 percent of garment workers are female, but supervisory roles in production tend to be held by men, leading to a gender-based power dynamic and in some cases harassment.
On the corporate side, women are underrepresented in upper management, despite being a key consumer demographic for fashion.
During the Discover the SDGs event this month, held by the Conscious Fashion Campaign in collaboration with the UN Office for Partnerships, vertically integrated denim company Artistic Milliners will be speaking on a panel about gender equity. Carved in Blue caught up with the company to discuss its sponsorship of the event and how Artistic Milliners addresses women’s equality in its own operations.
Carved in Blue: Why did you decide to support Discover the SDGs?
Artistic Milliners: The fashion industry undoubtedly is one of the largest industries. It has a substantial impact across all three dimensions of sustainability: economic, social and environmental. It is influential, and it is positioned to serve as an awareness platform for the public. While nonprofits and developmental agencies are closely tied to UN SDGs, it will be impossible without participation from the private sector. At the core of fashion, there is a connection to the SDGs, which is the promotion of sustainable consumption, which involves moving away from selling more to consumers.
The SDGs are important because they underpin our global response to some of the biggest environmental and social problems, plus they serve not only as a risk management tool but also to drive innovation, and that investors and businesses are increasingly incorporating them into their risk and materiality assessments. Guidance from the UN can also help brands to set more ambitious goals, rather than simply meet the bare minimum. The fashion industry employs millions of people globally and impacts their economic and social situations firsthand. As for the environmental aspect, the rise of globalization and the increase of buyer-driven demand has contributed to a massive diversification within the fashion industry.
It is time to walk the talk. As we are now meeting with future fashion generations, it is our responsibility to offer systems, algorithms and solutions for them.
We believe businesses’ actions determine the success of SDGs and the corporate strategy should be aligning with them. We’re well aware that referencing specific goals is the philosophy of working with the SDG Framework where we try to identify the social and environmental areas to address clearly. However, it is important to remember, without collaborative efforts and partnerships, it would be difficult to reach goals.
Carved in Blue: For Artistic Milliners, what is the importance of SDG 5: Gender Equality?
Artistic Milliners: In 2018, Artistic Milliners became the official signatories of United Nations Women Empowerment Principles and listed on the United Nations website as participants of UN Sustainable Development Goals.
For us, our gender diversity efforts are critical to realizing our goals of business diversification, innovation, sustainability and growth as well as geographical expansion within and outside of Pakistan.
Carved in Blue: At Artistic Milliners, how are you addressing SDG 5 in your own operations?
Artistic Milliners: Artistic Milliners’ gender diversity efforts have gained international recognition, and the company aims to continue building on this momentum to strengthen its female talent pipeline and achieve its long-term goals.
Creating equal opportunities: Artistic Milliners differentiates itself from its competitors by building a strong reputation as the only textile company in Pakistan’s manufacturing sector with the most women in senior management positions. Currently, the ratio of women and men in senior management is 50:50.
Over the years, women at AM have been recruited in various non-traditional senior leadership roles such as the heads of the planning, supply chain, merchandising, CSR and communications departments. That we believe will create equal opportunity and sustainable business practices for all the employees and the company.
Women empowerment initiatives: Currently we continue to invest and expand in programs like Gap Inc. P.A.C.E (Personal Advancement and Career Enhancement) and Levi’s Worker Wellbeing initiative, HERproject and Adult Literacy to cover the majority of our women workforce.
- GAP P.A.C.E Program:The P.A.C.E program is run in collaboration with Gap Inc. Artistic Milliners was the first company in Pakistan to embark on this project in 2015. GAP Inc. P.A.C.E. is a life skills training program that educated women on the topics such as communication, problem solving, legal and financial literacy.
- Levi’s worker well-being program: Artistic Milliners has worker-friendly initiatives such as charity funds, health insurance via government and free lunch and transportation for work.
Under the umbrella of the Levi Strauss & Co. Worker-Well-being Program, Artistic Milliners has teamed up with the NGO Pakistan Micro-finance Network to provide experiential learning on financial matters to its workers. We built a financial literacy program including topics such as banking, insurance, asset diversification, investments and savings. - Literacy Program, supported by Levi’s Foundation: We initiated Literacy Program in October 2016 in collaboration with an NGO, Literate Pakistan.
The program is designed to educate an adult, in a span of six months, to a level where she can read and write Urdu language and acquire basic numerical skills.
In 2020, we are scaling it to cover 2,600 workers in a span of three years (2020-2023). This mega project will be done in collaboration with the NGO The Citizens Foundation. - HERproject with Bestseller:In 2018, we had a one-year project with Bestseller. HERproject is a year-long program that aims to attack taboos around women’s health and lifestyles. It leverages an informal network of women to impart education on such topics as personal hygiene and nutrition, maternal health and family planning, etc.
Artistic Milliners is running this program in partnership with an NGO, Business for Social Responsibility, and a Denmark-based fashion brand, Bestseller. - Diversity and Inclusion Strategy:We have launched our D&I Strategy in 2019. Under this, we are making strategic changes in our building constitution to make workplaces accessible to challenged people. It aims to help the most marginalized groups in Pakistani society, including women, transgender people, differently abled people and acid burn victims.
- Project Phoenix (Smile Again Foundation): As part of reaching out and helping marginalized people in our communities, Artistic Milliners has forged collaboration with Smile Again Foundation to train and hire burn survivors in its facilities.
- Little Milliners Day Care Center: In 2019, Artistic Milliners signed a contract with Catco Kids Inc., a U.S.-based corporation, accredited by both the U.S. department of Youth and Family Services and the U.S. department of Education for consultancy in construction and operations. As a supporter of SDG 4 and 2 we provide quality child support services to our workers. The daycare center houses separate rooms for sleeping, dining, Montessori learning and a garden space for playing and outdoor activities. The daycare staff includes a certified nurse, center-aids and trained teachers.
- Fair Trade certified company: Artistic Milliners is Pakistan’s first Fair Trade certified vertically integrated denim company which represents safe and healthy working conditions, a sustainable livelihood for the people behind it, environmental protections and additional funds.
In Fair Trade, a percentage of the product cost is given to the worker fund called the Fair Trade Premium. The workers manage the funds directly without the involvement of management and also get to vote where they would like to spend the fund. One of the good things about the Fair Trade certification process is women run for elections and take on a public role of responsibility. - Milliner Cotton Initiative: Milliner Cotton is the first branded cotton from Pakistan that is unique in its scope in terms of covering the entire journey of cotton from farm to the mill. With MCI (Milliner Cotton Initiative), we aim to provide alternative livelihoods to 300 farmer families by 2022 as well as to provide life skills training to women cotton pickers to help them succeed in life. These include topics such as communication, problem solving, decision making, financial literacy etc.
Carved in Blue: How would you describe the current progress report for gender equality in the fashion industry? What top areas need improvement?
Artistic Milliners: The fashion business is largely run by men and has a traditionally masculine style of leadership. It’s a historical problem of our industry. Women are underrepresented at the executive level at corporate companies. Research shows that only 12.5 percent of apparel and retail apparel companies are led by women holding C-suite positions, and 26 percent of board members are women. Women are usually at mid-level roles, bringing enormous value to their organizations, but the recognition is extremely poor. We’ve been seeing more executive roles at the brand level and female founders who built very successful global brands, but the Fortune 500 still has only 37 women CEOs.
Business owners or management teams are not aware of the lack of women at leadership level. It is far beyond giving a title or a rank, but more about encouraging women to have power in the decision-making process.
For an industry where the women make most of the purchasing decisions and have a deep influence, it is interesting to see male-dominated product or sales teams decide what women will wear.
We do not see female innovators or women denim heads at the forefront, and their talent or hard work are not recognized and rewarded. Men in positions of power are taking credit for the work women have successfully achieved.
Carved in Blue: If a company is just getting started on gender diversity and equity practices, where should they start?
Artistic Milliners: Companies have to have gender equality policies that recognize the equality of opportunity and treatment from recruitment to decision-making process across all levels. They seriously have to think about improving the gender balance of their staff and in leadership positions. Partnering with NGO/IGOs, learning about pacesetters, understanding better practices for self-assessment and creating a roadmap for continuous improvement would work.
Certainly, 17 SDGs, 160 associated targets and 231 key performance indicators for achieving the UN 2030 Agenda must inevitably be their compass.
Hear more from Artistic Milliners during Discover the SDGs, on now through Dec. 30.