Fair Trade Fashion For and By Women:

Promoting Sustainability through Conscious Consumerism

After doing some research on fair trade clothing, I realized that women are not only more amenable to buying fair trade clothing, but they are the most willing consumers when compared with men. On top of that, women as producers generally receive the majority of microfinance loans to fair trade cooperatives in developing nations. Thus, women rule fair trade fashion demand and supply!

To begin with, researchers show that women shop more than men, and also that women purchase slightly more clothes than men. According to one Gallup poll women are almost twice as likely as men to have recently shopped at a “specialty apparel store” in the last month, and were about 20% more likely than men to have bought clothing within the same month (82% to 61%).

Women are not only willing to buy more, they are willing to spend more on fair trade.

According to one study on sweatshop-free consumerism On average, women report higher “willingness-to-pay” for sweatshop-free clothing than men. For example, just over half of women (51%) report willingness to pay at least $6 more for the sweater, while only around 41% of men were so willing. Women are also more willing than men to pay some price premium, and on average are willing to pay a higher price premium," to ensure the product is sweatshop-free.

If you’re familiar with microfinance, you know that the majority of microloans for developing nations go to women to support their micro-businesses. I found a very fascinating report published on microcreditsummit.org on the empowerment of women through microfinance. It focuses on why women account for “74 percent of the 19.3 million of the world’s poorest people now being served by microfinance institutions.” This is for several reasons, often involving the perseverance of women in the face of gender inequity in financial, cultural, and legal matters in developing nations.

The study states that of 29 micro-finance organizations surveyed by the UN in 2001, 6 loaned exclusively to women. At the same time, the article mentions that arrears rates in all-male micro-finance programs of the Trust Bank in Ghana was 2.5 times that of all women programs. Men were also less likely to attend group meetings, and less reliable in general. Women on the other hand, are more likely to use the profit from their micro-businesses to support their children, thus using micro-loans to improve the livelihoods of their daughters. Empowering women through micro-finance facilitates their productive capacity to entire raise communities out poverty.

Here, we see connections being made between women through fair trade products.

On top of this, retail companies with a focus on sustainability, including fair trade, “outperform industry peers, particularly in the retail sector” according to a trend report on fair trade sales. Through the facilitation of micro-finance, and the demand by conscious consumers, women in developing nations around the world are organizing to receive loans, run their own businesses and finance their daughters’ educations. Women are helping women helping women, rise out of poverty around the world when they purchase fair trade, and it’s incredible!

~Patrick

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