In conversation with the STITCH consortium: Introducing Fair Wear Foundation
In our new interview of “Meet the STITCH consortium” series, Andrea Spithoff, Gender Equality Programme Manager at Fair Wear Foundation, shared insights about her work, the integration of the gender lens within the partnership’s interventions and the challenges to overcome on the path to transforming the garment industry through gender-responsive human rights due diligence.
What is your role at Fair Wear?
I am the Gender Equality Programme Manager at Fair Wear Foundation, a multistakeholder initiative working on improving labour conditions in the garment industry by creating practical, scalable solutions to advance the respect for human rights. Through a collaborative approach, we drive brands, retailers, suppliers, workers, and their representatives to co-develop tested guidance, frameworks, and tools for impactful human rights due diligence.
The role of the gender team centres around embedding a gender lens into all our initiatives and operations. Workers who are marginalised because of their gender have different needs due to unequal access to and control over resources, institutions and power as well as their human rights. A gender-responsive approach is critical for ensuring that our work effectively addresses their unique challenges and needs.
FWF Workplace Education Programme training on violence and harrasment prevention in Bangladesh, 2018
What is Fair Wear responsible for within STITCH?
As the lead partner of STITCH, Fair Wear drives efficient, effective implementation of our joint theory of change while enriching interventions with our expertise and networks. Part of that expertise is on gender, which is my focus.
Fair Wear unites diverse stakeholders across the supply chain by collaborating with companies—brands, retailers, and suppliers—and worker representatives such as trade unions and CSOs. This approach enables us to develop practical, human rights-focused solutions that create a meaningful feedback loop. Within STITCH, we integrate data from our partners' worker voice tools into Fair Wear's HRDD Facilitation Tool, ensuring that brands and retailers address real needs of workers.
Together with ETI and six other organisations, we’ve further developed and promoted the Common Framework for Responsible Purchasing Practices—the industry’s key reference for responsible purchasing—complemented by our Purchasing Practices HRDD Framework. In production countries, our multi-stakeholder structures foster collaboration and empower local stakeholders.
What achievement has Fair Wear contributed to within STITCH that you are proud of?
During the STITCH programme, the Gender Working Group created the self-assessment Gender Marker Tool and accompanying Gender Marker Guide designed to help teams understand if an intervention is gender-unconscious, gender-aware, gender-specific, gender-sensitive, or gender-transformative. The aim of the tool and guide is to strengthen the integration of a gender lens in all of STITCH’s interventions.
This is needed because the STITCH consortium envisions a global garment industry that contributes to an equal and just society by respecting human rights in the world of work. One of the human rights that STITCH focuses on is gender equality – not least because approximately three-quarters of workers in the garment industry are women, and currently, there is a power imbalance across the industry that means they are disproportionately affected by systemic inequalities.
The tool and guide help to start dialogue and learning around gender and motivate STITCH consortium members to reflect on how a gender lens can be implemented in their work. This could include discussing the budget for the next financial year to conduct a gender analysis, the best way to consult with the target group, strengthening monitoring tools to collect gender-disaggregated data, or changing programming approaches to tackle the root causes of inequality, among many other topics.
What does your average day look like?
I am part of the STITCH Gender Working Group, which brings together the gender leads of the six organisations. Gender equality and inclusivity are central to STITCH. Fair Wear is the lead partner in STITCH, so within the Gender Working Group, we take on the bulk of the administrative and logistical work to ensure the Group works effectively. In terms of content, however, everyone contributes equally.
Currently, the Gender Working Group is working to create an open-source version of the Gender Marker Tool and the Guide. First, we are doing an internal review of the Tool and Guide, as it has been in practice for a few years. We want to understand what works well and what can be improved. When this process is finished, we will do an external review – asking organisations to trial the tool and give feedback. We are also looking for a good place to host it and discussing the best way to turn the guide – which is currently part of a learning management system – into an accessible, but interactive format.
What is the biggest challenge on the path to transforming the garment industry, and which solution to this challenge do you think can be the most impactful?
Gender inequality and the underrepresentation of women in social dialogue remain major challenges in the garment industry. Despite making up 75% of the 75 million workers in the Global South, women hold few leadership roles and are trapped in low-paying, precarious jobs with little opportunity for advancement. Gender-based harassment is common, and systemic barriers hinder their ability to organize. The industry devalues their labour, viewing garment work as an extension of domestic roles, reinforcing the notion that it is unskilled and less deserving of fair pay or career growth.
A key challenge in tackling gender inequality in global supply chains is recognising the deeply embedded gender norms, cultural biases, and power imbalances that shape each context. Companies must critically assess their role in these dynamics and the impact they have.
The solution to this is gender-responsive human rights due diligence, an approach to Human Rights Due Diligence that specifically considers the ways in which business operations and decisions can impact individuals differently based on their gender.
It is a process of identifying, preventing, mitigating, and addressing human rights risks with a specific focus on gender-based impacts. It goes beyond applying a gender lens, which is a way of seeing—it is an analytical perspective that uncovers gender-based differences, inequalities, and biases. Gender responsiveness involves taking action on that perspective to address gender disparities and promote gender equity. It means designing policies, processes and programmes that actively respond to gender-related needs and challenges. Key elements of gender-responsive HRDD are gender-disaggregated data collection, gender-sensitive risk identification and analysis, the inclusions of marginalised voices in data collection and decision-making, targeted gender responsive policies, processes, operations and activities that address systemic barriers, and implementing gender sensitive grievance mechanisms.