Beyond the shopfloor: Closing the leadership gap for women in RMG

Bangladesh's ready-made garment (RMG) sector has long been powered by women. However, powering a sector is not the same as shaping it.

For decades, women have formed the backbone of factory floors – stitching, assembling, finishing, and inspecting. Their participation has transformed the country's export economy and opened income pathways for millions of households. Yet, when one looks upwards – into supervisory cabins, technical control rooms, and management offices – the gender balance shifts.

Participation has been achieved. Progression remains uneven.

If Bangladesh's RMG sector is to remain competitive in a future shaped by ESG standards, supply chain scrutiny and global compliance expectations, the next frontier is not employment numbers. It is structured leadership pathways.

Beyond the shopfloor

Women make up about 53 per cent of Bangladesh's nearly four million garment workers, according to the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA). While the share remains substantial, it has declined from nearly 80 per cent in 1994, according to research on changes in the sector's workforce composition.

A factory floor full of women behind sewing machines is a familiar sight. Yet, representation drops sharply in technical and decision-making roles – industrial engineering, production planning, quality assurance leadership, maintenance, compliance management, and senior operations. The pipeline narrows further at mid-management and executive levels.

This pattern is rarely described as overt discrimination. Many factories emphasise equal pay for equal work and merit-based promotions. Workers frequently report fair treatment.

However, inequality is often systemic rather than intentional.

Advancement depends on exposure to complex machinery, cross-department mobility, informal mentorship, and visibility to senior management. These opportunities are not always distributed evenly. Social norms, assumptions about technical aptitude, and perceptions about long-term career commitment subtly shape who is encouraged towards engineering tracks and who remains on the line.

The result is not exclusion by rule. It is inequality in trajectory.

The invisible barrier

If leadership gaps persist, the issue is not simply skills. It is structure.

Recruitment policies may appear gender-neutral, yet hiring into technical roles often relies on prior exposure or informal referrals – areas where women have historically had less access. Promotion systems may be merit-based, but often lack defined competency benchmarks or transparent progression pathways.

Without HR mechanisms that deliberately build and monitor women's advancement, progression remains discretionary.

Retention adds another layer. As factories modernise and adopt greener technologies, demand for technical skills increases. When women leave due to limited progression or workplace constraints, they are often replaced in technical tracks by men entering from outside.

Over time, workforce composition shifts – not because women lack capability, but because pathways were never systematically designed.

Retention, therefore, is not only a workforce stability issue. It is also a leadership strategy.

Embedding gender-sensitive recruitment criteria, defined promotion standards, mentorship frameworks and gender-disaggregated performance tracking into HR systems can institutionalise advancement rather than leaving it to chance.

Advancement must be designed, not assumed.

The illusion of neutrality

Evidence from factory-level interventions illustrates these dynamics.

Swisscontact, through the Promoting Green Growth in the RMG Sector through Skills (PROGRESS) project – supported by the Embassy of Sweden and the Embassy of Switzerland – works with factories to strengthen internal skills systems, while integrating gender inclusion into HR practices.

Where structured training and clearer promotion pathways were introduced, performance improved and incomes rose for both men and women.

Yet nuance emerged.

In one assessment, the average monthly wage increase was slightly higher for men than for women. Neither workers nor management reported deliberate gender-based discrimination. Many factories emphasised alignment with national wage structures, and some even prioritised women for advancement.

And still, the differential persisted.

As one management representative candidly observed: "Male workers can handle heavy machines better."

Statements like these rarely appear in official policy documents. But they influence role allocation. Men were more frequently channelled into higher-paying technical functions linked to machinery and complex operations, while women remained concentrated in production roles with narrower wage progression bands.

Equality in principle did not automatically translate into equality in outcome.

This nuance matters. Compliance with wage rules is necessary but not sufficient. HR systems must interrogate patterns – who enters technical training, who rotates into engineering departments, who receives mentorship for supervisory roles and who is nominated for management tracks.

Without this scrutiny, disparities quietly reproduce themselves.

From skills to structured pathways

Addressing the leadership gap requires more than standalone training sessions. It requires embedding a structured continuum within HR policy – from entry-level skills development to supervisory preparation to management-track entry.

Swisscontact's PROGRESS project supports women's supervisor development initiatives that combine technical upskilling with communication skills, confidence-building, and leadership exposure. Supervisory roles demand not only operational competence, but also authority, negotiation skills, and visibility within factory systems.

The project is also piloting a young leadership programme for women. By creating defined entry pathways for fresh graduates into industrial engineering, production planning, and operations leadership tracks, these models embed departmental rotations, mentorship support, and performance benchmarks from the outset.

Rather than expecting women to rise informally over time, such pathways integrate advancement into the system itself.

Crucially, these initiatives must be anchored in HR policy: proactive outreach to female engineering graduates, supervisory competency frameworks, formalised mentorship structures, and regular review of gender-disaggregated progression data.

When these elements are embedded, leadership development becomes systematic. When they are absent, leadership remains accidental.

A shared imperative

Transforming leadership pipelines is not the responsibility of a single actor. It requires coordinated commitment across brands, factories, development partners, and academia. Brands influence sourcing standards and talent investment. Factories shape HR policies and mentorship cultures. Development partners help pilot and scale structured models. Academic institutions build future technical professionals.

Kazy Mohammad Iqbal Hossain, global sustainability manager at Lindex HK Ltd., said: "Women's leadership is reshaping the RMG sector. At Lindex, we see women not just as part of the workforce but as powerful decision-makers driving progress and resilience. Their leadership strengthens our value chain and moves the industry toward a more equitable and sustainable future."

From the factory perspective, Sharah Nafisa Kakoly, associate director of HR at Ananta Companies, said: "Women's empowerment is not just a commitment for factories; it is essential to building fair and sustainable workplaces where women can progress from the shopfloor into supervisory and leadership roles."

Hanna Norell, head of development cooperation at the Embassy of Sweden in Dhaka, said: "Women have long been central to Bangladesh's RMG success. The next step is supporting their progression into supervisory, technical and leadership roles. This requires joint efforts across industry and stakeholders, linking gender equality with stronger, more competitive and resilient supply chains."

Lithe Muntaha Mohiuddin, director of the Bangladesh Apparel Youth Leaders Alliance (BAYLA), said: "Bangladesh's RMG sector must now move from participation to progression. A structured 'Production-to-Leadership Pipeline' can enable operators to transition into supervisory, industrial engineering and management roles through modular technical training, transparent promotion systems and industry-wide mentorship programmes for women."

These perspectives converge on a simple insight: competitiveness and equity are not competing priorities. They reinforce one another.

Beyond representation

Bangladesh's RMG sector has demonstrated resilience and adaptability – from safety reforms to environmental upgrades to digital compliance systems.

The next transformation lies in leadership architecture.

Future efforts must institutionalise gender-inclusive promotion criteria, strengthen mentorship networks, integrate advanced green skills and labour rights awareness into training, and align ESG reporting with emerging global regulatory standards.

Women already power the industry. The question now is whether the industry is ready to build systems that allow them to shape it.

Participation built Bangladesh's garment sector. Structured pathways will define its future.