“Despite great strides made by the international women’s rights movement over many years, women and girls around the world are still married as children or trafficked into forced labor and sex slavery. They are refused access to education and political participation, and some are trapped in conflicts where rape is perpetrated as a weapon of war. Around the world, deaths related to pregnancy and childbirth are needlessly high, and women are prevented from making deeply personal choices in their private lives”
Human Rights Watch
The Gender Gap
At Just Fashion we fight for gender and race-equality. We believe that everybody should have equal rights to make the same choices in their lives, which is not nearly the case today.
Based in Norway, Just Fashion are one of the lucky ones, at 3rd place in the Global Gender Gap Report for 2014, only beaten by Iceland and Finland.
It’s much worse for countries further down on the scale, like Nepal on 112th place, and all the way down to Yemen, at 154th place, the last one.
Supporting women through your fashion buys
Several designers at Just Fashion are working with women in countries further down on this list, and they make sure that
- their factories and workshops strengthen women’s rights
- giving not only minimum wage but also living wage
- making sure that they have good working conditions and that the women are heard
Outside Kathmandu in Nepal our designers Abareness have taken part in a project where women, because of their caste, cannot leave their village. By giving them the opportunity to work from home, their economy and status is strengthened. These products are now unfortunately sold out, but we are hoping there are new projects to come.
Dark statistics
- Violence against women and girls is a global issue with 1 in 3 women across the world experiencing violence (Source: London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine 2013)
- Globally, women make up just 22% of parliamentarians. (Source: Inter-Parliamentary Union 2014)
- Women spend at least twice as much time as men on domestic work, and when all work – paid and unpaid – is considered, women work longer hours than men. (Source: The World’s Women 2010: Trends and Statistics)
- Only 4% of signatories in 31 major peace processes between 1992 and 2011 were women: 2.4% of chief mediators, 3.7% of witnesses and 9% of negotiators were women. (Source: UN Women – Women’s Participation in Peace Negotiations: Connections between Presence and Influence 2011)
- 7.4% of countries have had female heads of states over the last 50 years. (Source: The Global Gender Gap Report 2013, World Economic Forum)
- A global survey of 1,119 women’s rights organization from over 140 countries showed that only 1 in 10 received funding from bilateral donors, national governments and international non-government organizations. Meanwhile only 6.9% received funding from UN Women. (Source: AWID Global Survey “Where is the money for women’s rights?” 2011) Source
Just Fashion designers supporting women
By supporting designers who make sure that women get paid, not only minimum, but also a living wage, you can take part in slowly changing a mentality in countries where women rarely get a say. And in other countries, like Germany, Norway and the Netherlands, you will give a share to women in professions that are not considered prestigious or important.
Here are the designers you should buy from at Just Fashion to make sure you support women in some way.
Abareness
Makes sure that the women in the bigger knitting factory have good working conditions and living wage pay. In addition, Abareness is actively supporting educational projects that doesn’t discriminate between girls and boys, through their #coolkidsneedscleanwater project.
Anne Gorke
Are supports independent craftswomen in and around Weimar in Germany.
Apollonius
Is a woman; designer Emma does all the work herself in her studio in Oslo.
Elsien Gringhuis
Supports independent craftswomen in Netherlands. In addition, she only use women of all ages, and with focus on their thoughts, ambitions and aspirations in her lookbook campaigns, and by doing so, shows another side of fashion than the too young clothing hanger-model.
Idamari
Does all the work herself, in her studio in Berlin, and she is obviously a woman.
IIIF
Works with one craftswomen on Iceland for their leather bag-collection.
Kerber
Works with craftswomen (and men) in Hoi an in Vietnam. They get living wage and are encouraged in developing their skills, also taking part in the design process.
Retusj
Karen Pederstad is the designer behind Retusj, also made by hand by the designers herself in her studio in Oslo.
Just Fashion
Almost everybody involved in Just Fashion are women , and our founder is a woman. By supporting us, you also support our fight to find more designers who believe in gender and race-equality, regardless of their gender.
Learn more about gender equality
This video from World Economic Forum tells a short version of why the report about gender equality is important
Read and look at key statistics from the Gender Gap Report here, or download the total report.