In the imagination of the fashion system, women are very important. But, despite this, women still have a hard time in the companies (large and small) that make up its backbone: this is demonstrated by the reports by Forbes with Statista and PwC
by Roberto Procaccini
Sustainability – environmental, social, of materials, of distribution, of supplies, of energy sources, of production cycles. To hear the big talk, fashion is pure avant-garde. But then it turns out that, although it mostly speaks to women and about women, it is not an industry for women: it lags far behind when it comes to gender equality policies and practices. The whole thing reminds us a little of the anecdote about Thales, the ancient Greek philosopher scolded by the servant girl after falling into the well he had not seen because he was scanning the sky for answers to life’s questions: “All right, you are a great thinker, but what’s the use of thinking big if you don’t realise what you have in front of you?
Not an area for women
The results of Forbes and Statista‘s ranking of the world’s top 400 companies for female employees are all telling. In the top 10, there are no representatives of the fashion system. Widening out to the top 100, we find H&M (fast fashion) in 11th place and then, spaced out, the big names in athleisure: Adidas (25th), Nike (37th) and Puma (80th). And where is luxury? If you look for the big names in haute couture, Chanel is in the 120th position, Hermès in the 124th and LVMH in the 288th. Of course, the criteria of the ranking have something to do with it, explains Fashion Magazine.
Carried out on the basis of around 100,000 interviews with women in 37 countries on topics such as attention to possible discrimination and equal opportunities in career paths, the survey only considers multinationals operating in at least two of the six divisions into which the researchers divided the globe (Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, North and Central South America). Translated: many excellent fashion companies, which do not yet have this size, do not fit the target. But it cannot but be striking that for example Kering, (the parent company of Gucci, Bottega Veneta and Saint Laurent) even slipped out of the best 400.
On the upswing, late, anyway
Moving from global to national scale, the picture does not improve. PwC is a partner of Il Foglio della Moda in the realisation of the Women and Fashion Observatory, a report on pink quotas in the Italian fashion system, now in its fifth edition. Each annual update records a significant improvement over the previous one. However, the overall picture is still backwards: the average number of women on Boards of Directors, for example, is just 29.7%.
PwC itself conducted with Global Fashion Agenda and with the support of Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana the study Unpacking Pay Equity in Fashion: Italy. The first study, they claim from the columns of Pambianco News, on the subject of wage differences between men and women in the fashion supply chain. Well, we learn that around 50 per cent of large companies and barely 20 per cent of SMEs have the tools to monitor the gender pay gap internally. That is to say, all the others (half of the big ones and 80% of the medium-sized and small ones) do not even pose the problem. Meanwhile, in 45% of Italian manufacturing companies, maternity is still a negative factor for career opportunities. Despite the proclamations, there is still a long way to go.
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