March 8th is International Women’s Day - it’s a day to advocate for gender equality and equity as well as celebrate women’s achievements! As a female-led team here at Sui, empowering women, from those in our core team and our vendors to those in our community, has always been a priority, especially in the textile industry in India where female craftspeople have always made up a large part of the workforce but, historically, have not been properly valued.

So, today, we celebrate women’s day by acknowledging the strides we have made up to this point while also guiding you on who you can offer support to further empower women.

A quick history – working in the Indian textiles sector as a woman

Handicrafts is one of India’s most important sectors with India being one of the largest handicraft-exporting countries in the world, and it employs over 7 million people with most manufacturing units being located in rural areas and small towns. From woodware and glassware to pottery, and, of course, textiles, India produces a large range of products that are in demand across the world.

When it comes to who makes up the workforce, 56% of those employed in the handicraft sector are women.

However, although women are an important and impactful participant in the handicraft industry, they are not often valued as such.

Looking specifically at textiles, historically, women’s roles were always “framed as supportive – rather than primary”, despite the fact that their labour was crucial in the making of a final product - for example, when regarding the handloom sector, the process of spinning was usually left to women while weaving to men to create products like handwoven dresses. In another example, an early 20th century report from Punjab found that women earned half what men were paid in the ginning industry for the same labour (the work entailed separating cotton fibres from their seeds). All to show that women’s labour was often devalued: “The logic that women were physically weaker, less productive and had ‘natural’ duties of household management were used to justify lower pay.”

What has also remained a challenge to the empowerment of women in modern industry is the undocumented nature of the handicraft sector as it’s estimated about 90% of what actually may be a “200 million strong artisan economy” largely operates informally - meaning women could very well be completely unpaid for their labours.

And so, it is vital that we as consumers seek out how we can bridge the gap. Thankfully, there are businesses, NGOs, and craft clusters we can support all around India that are working to make sure women get the recognition they deserve; helping to close the gender pay gap; and highlighting the importance of valuing every craftsperson in the production chain.

In this next section, we help guide you in how you can extend your own support this women’s day and every day after!

Simple steps to empowerment

Before we get into who you can support, our first bit of advice is all about our approach and making sure we become conscious consumers. So, whenever you’re choosing and buying something to add to your conscious closet, the best place to start is to: do your research!

You need to be able to find the businesses and initiatives who support female empowerment. NGOs will very obviously promote their messages of empowerment due to the fact that they build their mission around it - so, they are easy picks on who you can support.

Outside of them, you can look into businesses like organic fashion brands and sustainable clothing brands - they will be more conscious about building a sustainable and ethical production chain that supports their workers, so there would be a high chance that they specifically try to empower women too.

As you look into these businesses, see if you can answer these questions positively:

• Do they talk about empowering women on their public platforms?

• Do they show you behind-the-scenes of their business to show women crafting or share stories from their women workers?

• Do they mention what stages of production are handled by women or what products are made by women?

It’s not a perfect method but it will steer you in the direction of those who are genuinely trying to promote gender equality and empowerment in their workspaces.

Who to support

To help you get started on being able to choose who you can support, we’ve got some suggestions!

1.WomenWeave is an NGO close to our hearts, and one we have worked with to craft our handwoven dresses and more. As a sustainable clothing brand ourselves, it’s important we align with vendors who share our same green values, which is why back in 2018, we created one of our first collections with their handwoven fabrics and have been working with them to this day.The NGOs primary focus is to support female weavers in their craft - often favouring Maheshwar’s most vulnerable women who are divorced, widowed, handicapped, and agricultural labourers with no family income. They provide a safe workspace and livable wage to women artisans and have created programs to teach women business skills to further help them support themselves outside of physical labour.

Their main initiative and project, the Gudi Mudi Khadi project: “links organic and non-organic cotton farmers of Central India with formerly unemployed local women to create unique, contemporary handspun & handwoven textiles for fashion products and home furnishings. Where possible we also use natural dyes and local methods of water conservation and reuse. The objective of this linkage is to ensure sustainable income and better lives for the weavers in the area in spinning and hand weaving of the local cotton.” - womenweave.org

All in all, they are a great representation of an initiative that empowers women while also creating a more sustainable fashion system. They work with many other organic fashion brands as well as ourselves, so we definitely recommend checking them out!

2.Kaarigar Mandi is an artisanal footwear brand whose mission is to uplift marginalized footwear artisans by creating sustainable livelihood opportunities for craftspeople in poverty, as well as create gender-neutral workspaces in a largely male-dominated footwear industry.

Like within the textiles industry, women artisans are also often overlooked in the footwear space. Moreover, the co-founders of Kaarigar Mandi were looking to teach their artisans new, modern skills to be able to keep up with national and international demand. What ensued was the introduction of new quality control systems and upgraded training programs that included women, enabling them to learn additional and higher-paying shoemaking skills, as well as enforcing that women be paid directly rather than through their husbands/family patriarchs as was the norm.

“Now, the company works with more than 600 artisans, 30% of whom are women, and the daily wage has increased by an average of 98%, according to Kumar. The goal: to increase that percentage to 50% over the next four years and to 90% by 2035. It also works with two of the largest five footwear brands in India, according to Kumar, and has 30 customers in total.” - forbes.com

3.In various parts of India, headed by various businesses and organisations, doll-making has also become a source of empowerment for women artisans. One story comes from another of our vendors, Khamir Crafts, where Kanta Ben, who had previously been a housekeeper employed by the kutch-based non-profit, uses fabric and fibre scraps to create her dolls.

The NGO themselves employs both men and women weavers, providing an ethical workspace for artisans to work alongside each other, all while employing sustainable practices of craft that have enabled us to craft our own handwoven dresses, shirts and so on.

 

We hope this March 8th you take the day to celebrate women’s day by supporting artisans, although many are making strides to create better systems to uplift women, there’s definitely room to grow! Remember to celebrate and empower women beyond IWD so we can all work toward a better, greener, more sustainable world.