If you enter a garment factory in India, or any part of the world for that matter, you will see that the workforce is starkly female. The Indian textile and garment industry employs 45 million people, out of which more than 60 percent are women. This makes it the biggest formal employer of women in a country where 80 percent of them are not engaged in paid work. While that might paint a rosy picture of women’s empowerment at the first glance, a closer look reveals something different.

Since the 1960s, women in developing countries have come to dominate the highly labour-intensive assembly lines of global supply chains. This is not without reason. Women’s unequal status in most societies makes them a cheaper source of labour as their work is often an additional or secondary source of income in most families. Further, their labour is also considered to be easy to control. Research shows that women are preferred in these types of jobs because they are more willing to accept strict work discipline, less likely to join trade unions, and conditioned to take up tedious, repetitive, and monotonous work—all of which make them more productive.

In spite of this, very few working women in India climb the ladder in their careers because of reasons ranging from family responsibilities and restrictive social norms to lack of professional networks. This is true in garment factories too—while women dominate the frontline workforce, it’s majorly men who hold supervisory roles in factories.

The garment industry has a long-standing reputation for a culture of abuse and stress. The cut-throat competition and highly time-sensitive nature of the work is one possible explanation for this. Any bottlenecks caused by workers can generate acute losses to the firm. Hence, the factory floor runs on high stress, and supervisors are expected to maintain it.

Read the full article about women leaders in the garment industry by Eshan Fotedar and Nirupama V at India Development Review.