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Does Fashion Subjugate Its Female Workforce?
By admins | August 4, 2009
We all know that being a woman today is not easy, and being a working woman in fashion is often an arduous task. The fashion industry, which relies on a largely female workforce, is surprisingly not female friendly. Yes, shocking, but unfortunately very true. New York’s fashion industry is 82% female, however executive level positions are only 44% female according to WWD’d 2009 Industry Survey. It is sad to say that our female dominated industry has such a substantial glass ceiling.
One area of concern is the sad state of our maternity leave and child care programs. While other traditionally female dominated industries like teaching and nursing have paid maternity leave and extended benefits, most apparel companies have none. Young women entering fashion are often shocked to realize that federal law does not require paid child birth leave. According to a Harvard University study of 168 nations the US is 1 of only 4 who does not provide paid maternity leave! Additionally, it is not uncommon for companies to push out women who are expecting or recently gave birth by creating impossible working conditions. Suddenly, a two week trip to China may pop up, followed by weeks of late night deadlines. We are often our own worst enemy as well, often younger mid-level women will eagerly step up to replace the exhausted new mothers or mothers to be. Unfortunately, once a pregnancy is announced in the fashion industry, everyone is on the look out for a younger, newer, fresher perspective to replace the soon to be stay-at-home mom. Oh, and as for childcare, what childcare benefits? Does anyone actually know of an NYC apparel company with any sort of childcare/daycare programs? ”It is the whole thing of careers and children; they are very hard to juggle,” British designer Katherine Hamnett told The Independent recently. “It tends to be gay men who are at the top in design – Yves St Laurent, etc,” she added. “That’s because they don’t usually have any children at all, it is easy for them.”
There’s also of course the issue of sexual harassment. Whenever you have an industry where men retain the majority of supervisor positions, sexual harassment is a concern. Luckily for the fashion industry, we do not seem to have an overwhelming problem with it. This is most likely due to our large population of strong, opinionated, New York women and compassionate gay men. Our biggest issue tends to be, when sexual harassment does pop up there is no official chain of recourse to pursue. We have written before about the apparel industries lack of human resource support, and sexual harassment is just another reason why companies need to invest in HR departments. While we could not find an actual study on the extent of sexual harassment in the Garment Center, Kent State University did an interesting study on women working in fashion retail. They found that fashion retailing was largely made up of young, unmarried, female employees. The study found in 1993 that 73% had experienced sexual harassment in the workplace and even more alarming when repeating the study 10 years later the results were identical!
Underlying all of these issues is the complete lack of job security in fashion. In an industry where it is not uncommon for designers to be replaced seasonally, and companies are consistently looking for a new, more fashion forward perspective, job security is a fantasy. With turnover so high, companies just do not invest in their employees, ie lack of benefits, no HR department, or the wishful dream of a matching 401K. We stumbled upon this fantastic quote from The Guardian. It is a disturbing but sadly accurate account of working in the apparel industry. They interviewed Ronnie Cooke Newhouse, who is a former New Yorker (creative director for Barneys) and now lives in the UK running her own design consulting firm. “There’s a difference between New York women and British women. In New York, we have no job security. You can work somewhere for 20 years and be fired for no good reason and with no warning. It’s almost impossible to fire people here. It means Americans feel they have to prove themselves anew every day. They’re only as good as their latest result. For women it’s especially acute because New York is so competitive and because women were career underdogs for so long, and have a kind of warrior spirit about it.”
So, what do you think of the state of the apparel industry? Are you as offended as we are that an industry so female dominated so inadequately supports its own women?
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Topics: fashion industry, garment center | 10 Comments » 
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August 4th, 2009 at 10:15 pm
Nice writing. You are on my RSS reader now so I can read more from you down the road.
Allen Taylor
August 4th, 2009 at 11:38 pm
Wonderfully important article, bravo. It is a sad stae of affairs around here.
Also disappointing is that while many young women launch their own labels, they unfortunately (for many reasons) do not provide work/life benefits and support to the women they employ.
August 5th, 2009 at 7:48 am
[...] blog 39thandBroadway raises the question [...]
August 5th, 2009 at 11:06 am
incredible to read this sad commentary on the lack of respect for women in this very woman oriented industry-LOVED the picture from Mad Men-it says it all!
August 6th, 2009 at 5:55 am
[...] posts about smart girls and smart fashion. Threadbared talks about academia and fashion, while 39th and Broadway explores the continuing inequality even within such a female driven industry like fashion. [...]
August 6th, 2009 at 8:43 am
I am always in awe of how few women are actually at the helm and have wondered why? This post shed a bit of light on the subject for me, thank!
August 6th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
It’s a very funny, sad, and interesting the cycle – being a woman at an executive level. First off, you want to get ahead so when the opportunity presents itself as a pregnant woman or new mother, sometimes the sisterly feminism takes a backseat. But then years later, that might be you. And in the current economy, people are expendable. It’s easy, and I’ve seen it, to replace someone for cheaper pay with higher education. So you worked there three years with only an Associate’s degree, here’s someone with a Bachelor’s who’ll take $3 grand less than you because they need a job just as badly.
I do agree with Cooke, though, it gives us women a fighting spirit.
August 7th, 2009 at 5:14 am
Your blog is impressive. It’s very informative and well written :) I’ll be back soon! Thanks for leaving me a comment!
http://flowergirlfashion.blogspot.com/
August 8th, 2009 at 12:21 am
What a said state of affairs! Wonderful writing! Congrads on being on the IFB Top 20.
August 19th, 2009 at 10:35 am
I totally agree with this since I myself am a victim of it. Employers refuse to see the long term benifits of hiring good employess. They are only looking at short term needs. Women with children sadly cannot get reduced schedule jobs or part- time jobs or even full time jobs if they are not able to work more than 45- hours a week.