Insights by a G&CP Partner
Sinem Akkocaoğlu*, Regional Manager – Central & West Asia, ZDHC Foundation
In the age of technology with rapid artificial intelligence improvements, “traditional” sectors still play an important role in global economies. As an example of these sectors, the textile industry, with its long history and significant export potential for a substantial number of countries, always captures attention. Embedded production culture in the industry can sometimes make it resistant to adopting new practices, e.g., using harmful and hazardous chemicals, but with the strong information exchange and awareness raised through the efforts of different stakeholders in the industry, a noticeable improvement was observed in the production countries in the last decade.
As all partners in the industry are aware, chemical usage and handling are crucial global sustainability concerns. As I mentioned, there is a substantial improvement in awareness, but identifying where exactly we are in this improvement journey requires additional elements of sustainability dimensions to be included in these discussions, meaning that more convergence in terms of understanding the social and environmental aspects could help to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of the topic. Setting standards, safer and more sustainable chemicals produced by chemical manufacturers, and collaboration among the industry organisations and universities are existing good practices. But if we look at the picture from the facilities’ side, we may need a more comprehensive way of understanding to see the distinct and common elements in the social and environmental discussions in textile production. This is where gender and chemicals intersect and become one of the most important parts of sustainability efforts at the facility level.
When we talk about the social aspect of sustainability in the textile sector, we can expect some cultural values and norms to play a role in the production countries. Starting with the departments, roles, and responsibilities in the facilities, the data I previously collected in Türkiye for textile production showed that there are distinct differences in the departments based on gender; thus, as a consequence, exposure to chemicals was also occurring at different levels. For instance, we can observe that women are employed more in sustainability, planning, quality control, laboratory, or garment departments with supervisory roles, whereas men are employed at the workstations where chemicals are intensely used, such as dyehouses, due to the very hot working environment and required physical strength. This is a clear indicator of the need to include a gender component based on roles and responsibilities, and the type of chemicals employees are exposed to in their departments. From a positive angle, when sustainability concerns regarding chemicals gained a strong awareness at the manufacturing facilities, the emergence of the above-mentioned sustainability departments paved the way for a positive change in women’s roles at the facilities, and they became more involved in the decision-making processes for substituting hazardous chemicals or safer chemicals purchasing.
Now, let’s revisit the facility-level awareness-raising angle of sustainability attempts. The Türkiye data showed that there is no restriction on women’s participation in capacity-building activities and that equal opportunities are provided for participating in training because those training activities are not planned on a gender basis; instead, they are planned based on the roles and responsibilities of the employees. With that being said, there were no specific women empowerment projects/working groups that further focused on gender aspects at the facilities, e.g., chemical exposure and its effects on the human body for men and women. Thus, even though the relevant training is provided and Safety Data Sheets are becoming available, providing these does not ensure that employees truly understand the health risks posed by chemicals or that they actively implement required safety protocols. This also led to a focus on another element in the chemical exposure: Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). When we look at the availability and usage of PPE from a gender perspective, we can see that their availability for different genders in appropriate sizes plays a crucial role, since PPE works as a final barrier between the worker and chemicals.
What was found in Türkiye regarding PPE was not about the availability of PPE at the production facilities, because, regardless of gender, facilities provide PPE in different sizes whenever any task requires its use. Rather, it is all about understanding chemical exposure and using PPE properly because even though relevant training covers these topics, workers still need to understand the importance of PPE and why it needs to be used.
We can definitely expect other areas of improvement to be added to these discussions, and other countries may have different realities as well. However, the insights from Türkiye already serve as a reminder of the importance of the convergence of gender and chemicals, and scholars and industry experts can approach the topic from different angles to ameliorate the missing/improvable implementation.
* I was privileged to conduct interviews with industry stakeholders in Türkiye regarding the topic during my master’s study. The discussion in this blog post is underpinned by the data collected during this study. For further information about the study or any opportunities for discussion/exchange of thoughts, please reach out to me via sinem@zdhc.org