Gender equality in our supply chain

We rely on over 1.1 million workers in our tier 1 factories to make our products, 59 percent of whom are women. Across the countries where we operate, cultural norms, legal frameworks and levels of gender equality vary. We are committed to supporting equal opportunities and well-being for all women working in the apparel sector.

H&M Group has signed the Women’s Empowerment Principles and we are working towards Sustainable Development Goal number 5 (SDG 5), which aims to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls by 2030.

Across our supply chain we target four areas:

• Health and safety
• Career and development
• Wages
• Representation

And we work at three different levels:

• Worker empowerment
• Factory management systems
• Industry and country transformation

In 2020, we consulted with Plan International to update and strengthen our gender equality strategy.

There are specific challenges related to gender equality that demand extra attention. For example, gender-based violence and harassment (GBVH) is a widespread human rights violation that happens in all industries.

We support any measures that offer greater protection for workers, for example the International Labour Organization’s Convention 190 and Recommendation 206, which recognise everybody’s right to a working environment free from violence and harassment. These are powerful tools governments can use to strengthen local laws to prevent GBVH and to support our efforts to be a fair and equal company.

Health and safety

We want all women to be empowered, healthy and safe in their everyday working life.

Health and safety is the foundation of our gender equality work, and we expect our supplier factories to set up and run health and safety committees. We support them to strengthen grievance systems and to ensure those systems are gender-sensitive, so more women feel comfortable reporting workplace issues such as sexual harassment. In addition, many factories we work with are providing training that raise awareness of, and help prevent, sexual harassment and other gender-related issues.

Example: Gender-based violence and harassment guideline and training

During 2022 we improved our approach to preventing, detecting and handling cases of GBVH. We worked with Jane Pillinger (PhD), a global expert on gender equality and gender-based violence at work, on a series of training courses and workshops for employees working with social sustainability in our production supply chain and National Monitoring Committees. The sessions raised awareness and provided supporting tools for suppliers to prevent GBVH and handle grievances.

Working in collaboration with IndustriAll and its affiliates, we also created a GBVH guideline for suppliers based on ILO Convention 190. The guideline gathers best practice on detecting, preventing and handling GBVH cases. We rolled out the guideline to our tier 1 suppliers during the summer of 2023.

This joint work was recognised in the Global Deal (OECD/ILO) Flagship Report 2022.

In 2025, we worked with over 130 factories employing more than 288,000 workers to carry out gap analyses in relation to our GBVH guideline and identify actions to address issues at their facilities.

Example: Multi-stakeholder project addressing sexual harassment and violence in India

We are founding members of the Textile Industry Coalition (TiC), launched in India in 2024. The initiative brings together brands, manufacturers, government agencies, trade unions, civil society organisations and research institutions. Together, we promote zero tolerance for sexual harassment and violence in Tamil Nadu, India.

TiC has worked with 13 production units across Tamil Nadu and supported community projects in six districts. The initiative includes eight modules addressing issues at both factory and community level:

1. Understanding gender
2. Prevention of sexual harassment
3. Protection of women from domestic violence
4. Protection of children from sexual abuse
5. Participatory safety audits
6. Building allyship
7. Training of trainers
8. Participatory monitoring and evaluation

• At factory level, the project supported the adoption of targeted safety measures, including the use of audio messages on zero tolerance for sexual harassment during morning assemblies and working hours. Suppliers were also encouraged to communicate their commitments publicly, for example on their websites.
• At community level, a group of 300 community change agents (236 women and 64 men) across 28 communities were trained and mobilised to promote safe spaces, conduct safety audits and foster allyship. In addition, more than 100 village frontline functionaries — including health workers, teachers and panchayat presidents — were engaged as champions to raise awareness of gender-based violence and harassment (GBVH).
• At government and policy level, the Directorate of Higher Education, Directorate of Industrial Safety and Health, and Directorate of Technical Education have initiated revisions of existing inspection formats to strengthen enforcement of POSH compliance across industries. The project is also exploring opportunities to revive the POSH portal provided by the Tamil Nadu government, to make it more efficient and fully operational.
• A total of 39 organisations from key textile industry constituencies have joined the coalition, reinforcing a shared commitment to safer workplaces.

Representation

We want women to have equal participation, voice and leadership in social dialogue, including all worker representation forums.

When women participate in workplace dialogue structures, everybody benefits. Issues important to women are more likely to be put forward, which builds a foundation for good working conditions. We work with suppliers, peers and trade unions to support worker representation and provide training about democratically electing representatives. We also partner with IndustriALL Global Union to support trade unions in our supply chain.

Background

We recognise that sensitive issues, including gender-based violence and harassment, are often underreported and difficult to detect through standard social compliance monitoring. In this context, we aim to apply a gender-responsive lens to the development of effective grievance mechanisms, ensuring equal access for women. This work is supported by research led by a global expert in causal impact evaluation of policies and programmes, together with a team of four academics.

The expected outputs include a report with insights from focus group discussions and worker surveys, as well as guidance on the design of checklists and a step-by-step approach to implementing gender-responsive grievance mechanisms for suppliers.

Example: Better Work project in Cambodia

In 2023, over 80 percent of our manufacturing suppliers in Cambodia worked with Better Factories Cambodia (BFC) and established a bipartite committee to foster a culture of improvement and support dispute resolution and prevention. The committees are made up of factory workers and management and facilitated by experienced BFC advisers.

Women make up over 50 percent of worker representatives in these bipartite committees, however they voice their concerns and ideas less frequently, and tend to follow discussions rather than initiate them.

Career and development

We want women to have equal opportunities for skill development and career progression.

We are developing a framework with the objective of promoting inclusive workplaces by:

• Enhancing technical skills of female and male factory workers for improved productivity, product quality and increased competitiveness.
• Supporting career progression and job satisfaction through structured training – resulting in increased retention and a clear skill-based advancement pathway.
• To give women the same career possibilities as men, we need to identify and tackle the barriers that hold them back. We were involved in a research study run by independent experts which examines gender disparities in career progression within the garment manufacturing sector across four major production regions: Bangladesh, North India, South India and Pakistan. Drawing on survey data from over 6,000 factory workers, this study explores how men and women differ in their aspirations, expectations, opportunities and outcomes related to promotion to higher wage grades (or “skills”) or supervisory roles. An intervention follows the initial surveying phase and short-term impacts are assessed through a second round of surveys. We aim to have the findings and recommendations of this study by 2027 and integrate them into our strategy.

Wages  

We want men and women to receive equal remuneration for work of equal value

However, according to UN Women, the gender pay gap stands at 16 percent, which means women earn 84 percent of what men earn, no matter what industry they work in. Differences in pay add up and have daily negative consequences for women and their families. We are working to improve wages in our supply chain by helping factories to bring in effective wage management systems. These systems empower workers by raising awareness about wages and developing skills to improve them. They also help factories set a fair wage structure that isn’t influenced by a worker’s gender. According to research by independent experts, pay increased by 5 percent for all workers in factories with fully implemented wage management systems compared to those without. You can find out more about our wages work here.

Example: Gender pay-gap study

Since 2021 we have worked with wages expert Professor Raymond Robertson to map and understand the gender pay gap in our supply chain. Together we created a wage survey that collected data over two years on the wage and skill levels of workers at all our tier 1 suppliers, covering over 1,300 production units.

The findings show a statistically significant pay gap between men and women in most production countries. The pay gap varies across factories and countries and seems to grow as workers move up the pay scale. It appears to be driven by the skill gap between genders, as men tend to have acquired more technical skills and therefore benefit from higher wages. Men also generally are promoted at higher rates and get higher raises when promoted. Wage management system programmes help reduce wage gaps at the top of the wage scale.