Who's your feminism for?
Who's your feminism for? Gender & discrimination in the global fashion industry
21 October 2021, 17.00-19.30h CEST, (Online event)
Click here to register
Newly produced clothes and shoes have passed the hands of many women before consumers find them in stores. Most of these women face exploitation and a hostile working environment due to discrimination, disrespect and abuse within garment factories. Fashion brands try to convince consumers and society at large with costly public relations campaigns that they produce and sell “sustainably”, some even started to use the buzzword “feminism” as a slogan on their shirts. However, working women`s reality in garment factories around the world does not correspond to this image at all. We invite you to hear from women themselves what it means to work in the garment sector, what it means to face discrimination and harassment in the factories but also how women organize themselves to change the situation.
Throughout the event, artists and dedicated people working on the issue of fashion and gender will present their work to support our call for a change – join us by registering here!
Contributors
Anannya Bhattacharjee (Asia Floor Wage Alliance) is labour organiser, trade unionist in India and international coordinator of the Asia Floor Wage Alliance (AFWA), an international alliance led by Asian trade unions fighting for living wages for Asian garment workers, who are primarily women. She lived in the US for many years, where she became involved in community & immigrant organising with a focus on work around domestic violence. She was involved in World Social Forum (WSF) Movement when her engagement in intersectional work became an integral part of her trade union and labour rights work. Built on this comprehensive experience she became a leading voice for the development and promotion of an Asian Floor Wage.
Vivien Tauchmann is a designer, researcher and educator, exploring socio-political relations through embodied and kinaesthetic approaches. By positioning the human body as relational material, she seeks to expose and confront aspects of man-made infrastructure and subvert processes which seem to constitute social and cultural boundaries of power and injustice. Her on-going project, “Self-As-Other-Trainings”, was part of different workshops and events, including “Stay LIVE at Home!” by Performistanbul, “INSIST 2” at KU Leuven, and “the new local” in Brussels. She is active in several initiatives, like the Clean Clothes Campaign. Currently, she is based in Leipzig. Find out more.
Sofia Ashraf is a digital content creator, rapper and writer. She began rapping at the age of 18. Her first public stage was Justice Rocks – a copy-left initiative that uses the medium of performing arts and music to challenge corporate globalisation, discrimination and hate politics. In 2015 Vettiver Collective along with Sofia produced “Kodaikanal Won’t” – a video addressing the mercury poisoning caused by a thermometer factory owned by Unilever. The video garnered over 4 million views and resulted in the multi-national company compensating 591 ex-employees. Sofia Ashraf also created content on YouTube under the moniker "Sista from The South" on the badass feminist channel - Blush. Her primary media of choice are music and comedy. Brought up in an extremely austere and orthodox Muslim household in Tamil Nadu (India), Sofia's primary objective is to help girls like her fight years of social conditioning and moral policing to heed their true calling. Find out more.
ReSew is a sewing cooperative. Their workshop is located in Kiev, Ukraine. They are united by their love for sewing, design, as well as social and environmental activism. They like to reflect subjects such as privileges, discrimination, working conditions among other topics. They sew new things from what is no longer needed in the wardrobe, from leftovers and especially from things with history. This allows them to earn a living, while saving the world from yet more overload with textile waste. Their slogan: ReSew - alter things - upcycling, ReSque - save the planet, ReNew - generate new ideas. Find out more.
Parvathi Madappa has been working with Cividep India for the past 6 years. Cividep engages directly with workers in India’s most significant export sectors: garment, leather, and electronics industries, coffee and tea plantations and supports workers with trainings about their rights and entitlements, supports efforts to collectivise, and facilitates grievance redressal. Parvathi has joined as programme officer managing Cividep`s work on human rights in the garment sector and coffee plantation sector and today is overseeing all projects pertaining to the sectoral work at Cividep. Parvathi holds a master degree in social work and her interest has always been working for women and children. She is regularly speaking at various forums and events across the globe to raise awareness for the working conditions and low wages of women workers in India.
Emina Abrahamsdotter, FLER (Foundation for local economic development): report on gender based violence in fashion industry in Southeast Europe.