From Stitching Threads to Weaving Success
Rathnamma’s incredible story of training under almost all of Shahi’s programs to leading a line of her own and striving for a better workplace.
By women, for women: How we co-created a menstrual hygiene management program with our female workforce
In a country where FLFP is abysmally low, focusing on women's holistic health and well-being is essential. Learn how Shahi embraced the challenge and built a program with its workers.
Closing the skill gap: How Shahi’s skilling efforts enable more women to enter the workforce
India’s Female Labor Force Participation has fallen from 36.7% in 2005 to 26% in 2018. The apparel industry, as a majority female employer, holds the power to break some of the barriers women face to enter the formal workforce. Read our blog post to understand how Shahi’s skilling efforts are enabling more women to join the formal workforce.
By Gauri Sharma and Sakshi Katyal
Committing to women’s reproductive health at Women Deliver 2019
Women Deliver is the world’s largest conference on gender equality and the health, rights, and well-being of girls and women. It’s in some ways an unlikely event for an apparel business to attend, let alone be invited to speak. However, in a country where the number of women in the workforce is dropping rapidly (from 34% to 24% in the last decade), our industry is a crucial source of economic empowerment for low-skilled women as well as an advocate for advancing women’s participation in work outside the home.
A year on from Unit 8: What we’ve learned
Just over a year ago, a serious incident took place at one of our 65 factories, Unit 8, where unionized workers were attacked by non-unionized workers resulting in a violent exchange. It was widely covered in the media at the time and created truly regrettable reputational damage for our buyers. The incident and the behaviors that led to it are absolutely condemned by Shahi and go against our robust policies on freedom of association and anti-harassment. We take our responsibilities to our employees very seriously and have been leaders within the apparel sector in building a positive and supportive work culture. However, this incident is evidence that, despite many positive policies and initiatives, we have more work to do to protect the rights of all 100,000 of our workforce.
Empowering women who power the global fashion industry
Our industry is reliant on female labor. At Shahi we employ more than 70,000 talented and capable women across our factories and corporate HQ, making us one of the biggest private employers of women in India. As we prepare to attend Women Deliver 2019, the world’s largest conference on gender equality next month, we’ve been reflecting on what we’re doing to support women so we can set some objectives for the future.
Scaling P.A.C.E. to women in our supplier factories
In 2007, Shahi was the first company to pilot Personal Advancement and Career Enhancement (P.A.C.E.), a proprietary life-skills program by Gap Inc. We were also the first Gap Inc. supplier to be awarded the license to scale up P.A.C.E. by training women beyond our factories.
Can the apparel industry help to reverse India’s declining female work participation rate?
A commentary piece in the Economics Times by Arvind Panagariya, former Chief Economist at the Asian Development Bank and previous vice-chairman of the Government of India think-tank NITI Aayog, has highlighted the cost-efficiency of job creation in the apparel sector versus other industries. Comparing Shahi with Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) – a large conglomerate with operations in energy, petrochemicals, textiles, natural resources, retail, and telecommunications – he found that Shahi creates 252 times the number of jobs of RIL with a similar amount of assets. The findings lead to a conclusion that we have been committed to for many years: the apparel sector is a powerful opportunity to create high quality, formal employment, especially for India’s dwindling female workforce.
