Worldwide, 70 million people work producing clothing and footwear. Around 80% of these workers are women. The fashion industry is worth US$2 trillion per year, yet its workers receive poverty wages to live and work in dangerous conditions. In 2014, for example, over 1000 workers in Bangladesh were crushed to death in a factory collapse, highlighting the industry’s prioritisation of profit at the expense of people.

Although workers in supply chains are vital to our everyday lives, we know very little about the women who make our clothes and shoes. The UK government highlights urgent concern that there is a lack of systemic collection and reporting of gender-disaggregated data by companies and other organisations involved in managing global supply chains. Women workers in garment supply chains are simply invisible workers.

Sustainable Development Goal 8.8 targets “safe and secure working environments for all workers”. Yet without this systemic data the problems that lessen women’s quality of life in the garment industry are not fully known and are therefore hard to address. The Invisible Workers project addresses this challenge, by generating evidence and promoting action to eradicate the specific risks female garment workers around the world are exposed to in their everyday life and work. Using feminist theory and methods, we aim to highlight and contest where gender-blind health and safety programmes hide or ignore these pervasive threats to women’s wellbeing.

We focus on four producer countries that represent different sites in the evolution of garment supply chain outsourcing: Cambodia, Ethiopia, Jordan and the UK. Our global approach allows us to identify the complex, more-than-local factors that perpetuate women’s vulnerability in garment work and target action to address the systemic causes of inequity within supply chains. To ensure our project amplifies women workers and delivers transformative change, our Invisible Workers team is collaborating with global partners within and beyond our research sites, working with international organisations, labour rights advocates, women’s rights charities, trade justice campaigns, and social movements.