The International Labour Organization (ILO) in a new brief underlined the implications of the COVID-19 on women in the garment industry have worsened.
This, it said, has happened due to underlying challenges which include under-representation of women’s voice, discrimination and harassment, wage gaps as well as unevenly shared unpaid care and family obligations.
The brief, according to an ILO web post, aims to raise awareness of the gendered reality of COVID-19 and to outline how the pandemic impacts men and women in the apparel sector.
As per Senior Gender Specialist for the ILO’s Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, Joni Simpson, women account for approximately 80 per cent of the workforce in the garment sector, so they are heavily affected to start with by many of the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic.
“… women also experience additional impacts due to the existing challenges they face in the workplace as well as expectations regarding women’s obligations in the home,” maintained the Senior Gender Specialist for the ILO’s Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific.
The brief highlights long-, short- and medium-term impacts of the crisis on the women workers.
Titled ‘Gendered impacts of COVID-19 on the garment sector’, a study conducted on apparel workers of Bangladesh, Vietnam, Lesotho, Cambodia and Kenya by Better Work project of ILO found that waged employment helped to advance women empowerment in societies considered to be highly gender.