Textile & Clothing Social aspects:

There are also important social aspects of the Textile & Clothing industry (apart from the jobs provided). While wages in developing countries in some assembly activities will be lower than wages in developed countries in downstream activities in the same clothing value chain, this misses the point for two reasons. Firstly, with out appropriate policies and institutions, developing counties often do not have the skills to enter into higher value added activities such as design and marketing and hence 1will not be able to command  a similar wage as in headquarter firms in developed countries. We may find that textile wages are higher than garment assembly wages, and the latter activities are more prevalent in poorer developing countries.  Secondly, a better comparator is what workers would otherwise have earned had there been no textile and clothing industries,  e.g. in other domestic industries (e.g. T&C activities offer women better employment opportunities than they would have had in the rural area, and pay twice the rate of domestic servants in Bangladesh.). Comparing on wages, while T&C activities are not amongst the best paid jobs, they are certainly not the worst even amongst manufacturing activities, let alone agriculture activities. But it would be better to  compare on access to employment, as the alternative for women in (urban) garment assembly firms in Bangladesh and Cambodia is seeking employment in rural areas which is dominated by men and where gender inequalities are higher. Wages paid to manufacturing workers are on average more than double those paid to agricultural labourers (with the exception of Mauritius)  and this covers only the formal sector. Textile & Clothing wages are higher than in several other manufacturing industries (dairy, wood processing, leather etc) but are half the average manufacturing wage, suggesting which textiles and clothing is a first step up the value-added industrialisation ladder beyond agriculture but before many other manufacturing and services activities. T&C wages are higher than those paid to agricultural workers. Foreign firms and exporting firms tend to pay higher wages than local firms, and we provide evidence for this for six countries (Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Philippines,Thailand and Zambia) and two industries (garments and textiles). Although most and regular studies on gender and equity in T&C production find a gender bias against women in both working conditions and financial remuneration, employmentlevels are often in favour of women, e.g. 90% of garment workers in Bangladesh (nearly 1.5 mn female workers) and Cambodia (around 250,000) are young female. Textile & Clothing employment is usually better (in terms of wages) than the alternatives for using similar skills such as agriculture or domestic services (see above).  A quick review of donor supported PRSPs suggests that poverty strategies appreciate the importance of textiles and clothing in achieving development goals. But there are different views in different countries – in some countries improving Textile & Clothing employment lies at the core of a development strategy for that country, while in other countries (that have already had Textile & CClothing production which may now be under threat) more emphasis is on export diversification.