Fast fashion is un-feminist and hurts women
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When one thinks of fast fashion they think about places like Primark and Shein, which predominantly cater to women so you might be thinking hey that's totally feminist they are targeting women! but no that's not a good thing one could even say that makes it worse as the men who are in charge of these big brands are profiting off of mainly women exp the president of Shein is a man, Chris Xu, and the president of Primark is paul marchent.
About Chris Xu and his fast fashion empire-
Chris Xu the founder and CEO of Shein, one of the biggest fast fashion retailers in the world is described as a mysterious billionaire. Xu has a net worth of about $10.5b*
Xu makes most if not all of his money from his fast fashion giant known as SHIEN. Shein is known for having affordable clothing and lacklustre quality. shien like many clothing companies outsources its labour to places like India and Bangladesh they also produce in China. their reason? Lax labour laws allow them to not only pay unlivable wages but have awful working conditions many an article have complained about the child labour that occurs in these factories children under most laws cannot work until teenage hood and then they don’t get paid the same as adults in their same field one could argue that this is an issue in of itself, but imagine you're a child working in a 3rd world country and you're below teenagehood so you not only get paid less than teens you also get paid less than adults in your same field furthermore many clothing factories have machinery that can injure small children using them. but who else works in these sweatshops, women! Women for generations have been making clothing for their families and these factories are an extension of these patriarchal standards. As I previously stated these factories are usually situated in 3rd-word countries or LICs**where patriarchal standards are way more enforced than they are here in the West meaning while here we have equal pay(in theory) in these LICs their women won't be getting equal pay so big brands sourcing there labour from these countries is not only for the general lower pay standards but also the low pay of the women.
In these countries, the majority of the people the brands hire are women because they are able to pay them less for more work.
Labor conditions of the fast fashion giants-
You might think the general mistreatment of women and children is bad but the fact is that not only is the pay bad but the general working conditions are atrocious! factories are known to have bad hygiene and are not up to building standards making them likely to collapse as we saw in the Rana Plaza collapse which was caused by mismanagement and insufficient renovations the collapse caused 1,134 deaths. Breaks are often not mandatory and days off are few and far between meaning that some only get a few days off a year. Recently some tiktok influencers were taken on a PR trip to a ‘Shein factory’ this was later proved to be a false factory put up in order to make them seem like a good company that does violate multiple human rights a day, the influencers went through the ‘factory’ filming what is now a very infamous tiktok where one stated that the workers were ”shocked that people thought they were treated badly” the influencer also showed the viewers the factory and it was pristine with the most recent technology and clean environment the influencer showed the machines not producing any clothing later this was used as proof of the factory being a sham as it would mean that they would be losing money, why would they be losing money? Because if all of Sheinds factories were like this one which shien has said they are that would mean they would all have these state-of-the-art machines which in turn would cost them millions to not only buy but power meaning that for their machines to be financially viable They would have to be constantly producing to create a profit, this further proves that this influencer trip was a purely a sham.
Why is buying from shien and other fast fashion brands so un-feminist and bad for your wallet?
One reason it's unfeminist is that it perpetuates patriarchal standards I've already stated that the women in these factories get hired more which is a good thing but they also get paid less. because capitalism
Why is it bad for your wallet? Because the quality is awful in order to keep costs down not only do they not pay their workers living wages but they also skimp on things like fabric quality they're also hardly ever made well because if a child is making your clothes you cant expect them to be good, but here's the thing it's been reported that if a worker messes up I piece of clothing they have their pay restricted!
A little feminist add on- I believe that if as a culture we decided it was father nature instead of mother nature we wouldn't be treating our planet so badly
In conclusion, shopping fast fashion is contributing to the financial abuse of women and children in LICs
*source Forbes
**LIC= low-income country
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