In March 2023 the world’s four largest women’s empowerment programmes in the fashion industry joined together to launch RISE, an initiative working to make it easier and more efficient for our industry to drive lasting impact on gender equality in our supply chain.
For more than 10 years BESTSELLER has partnered with BSR, one of RISE’s founding partners. Through BSR’s HERproject the company supported more than 135,000 women across 92 factories in its supply chain.
But with many different women’s empowerment programmes across the industry, suppliers were challenged with completing the wide variety of training and education initiatives from brands. By joining together, the four initiatives combine the strengths of each programme and will make it easier for brands to work with suppliers in continuing to improve the wellbeing of women workers.
“With four different programmes coming under the same umbrella it will make it easier for our suppliers to facilitate more women in the garment industry who can be empowered with new training and resources. Additionally having worker and employer representatives as members of the newly formed organisation will help create tailored training resources for individual sourcing countries,” says Andrei Vasiliev, Social Impact & Responsibility Manager in BESTSELLER.
How BESTSELLER supports RISE
By 2025, 75 percent of all product orders will be placed with suppliers that are highly rated in the company’s Sustainability Evaluation. BESTSELLER support suppliers to take part in women’s empowerment programmes, and their participation is reflected in its supplier rating.
Over the last 10 years during our partnership with BSR the company supported the development of RISE’s Foundations Digital programme (formerly known as HERessentials) for suppliers in Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Through an existing grant agreement, the company will continue our partnership and support the development of RISE’s Women Advancement and Leadership programme. This aims to drive impactful long-term change and promote women’s leadership and advancement in supply chains through creating inclusive and supportive workplace systems.
“Going forward RISE will be a key partner in helping us achieve an important goal, by 2025 all women employed with our strategic suppliers have access to resources that help them make their own informed decisions about health and professional development,” says Andrei Vasiliev.
About RISE
RISE (Reimagining Industry to Support Equality) is a collaborative initiative supporting industry to advance equality for women workers in global garment supply chains.
RISE brings together the four largest women’s empowerment programmes in the apparel industry - from BSR’s HERproject, Gap Inc. P.A.C.E, CARE International, and Better Work—to build from proven approaches, scale impact and improve efficiency.
The four founding partner organisations work with 50 of the world’s largest apparel brands and have reached over five million women workers globally.
RISE will support global brands to empower women workers in their garment, footwear and home furnishings supply chains and have a wider impact on promoting gender equality in the industry as a whole.
RISE will pursue its mission through three core strategies: (1) strengthening knowledge and skills for factory workers and managers; (2) transforming business practices to include gender equality, and (3) influencing public policy and other key actors.