From the Sector

Global Fashion Agenda (GFA) has published a new insights paper, Unpacking Pay Equity in Fashion: Türkiye, examining the drivers of gender pay disparities in one of Europe’s most important fashion sourcing hubs. Launched during a closed-door industry roundtable at the OECD Forum on Due Diligence in the Garment and Footwear Sector in Paris, the insights paper explores how structural factors, including occupational segregation, care responsibilities, and limited data visibility, continue to shape pay outcomes for women in Türkiye’s textile and apparel sector, while highlighting opportunities for coordinated action across policy makers, brands, other buyers, and suppliers.

The insights paper draws on a facility-level survey of 43 Turkish textile and apparel manufacturers, interviews with trade unions and worker associations, and input from social sustainability experts including the Social & Labor Convergence Program (SLCP), the Fair Labor Association (FLA), and the Anker Research Institute (ARI). The findings offer a nuanced picture of pay equity in a sector that employs nearly one million formally registered workers and contributes approximately 7.8% of Türkiye’s national GDP.

Key Findings:
Unpacking Pay Equity in Fashion: Türkiye highlights several key insights into pay equity within the Turkish fashion manufacturing industry:

• Türkiye’s gender pay gap is estimated at between 15.6% and 17.4%. The EU average is around 12%. The insights paper cautions, however, that headline pay gap figures alone can mask deeper structural inequalities within the sector.
• Gender pay disparities are driven largely by structural factors rather than unequal pay for the same work, including occupational segregation, differences in career progression opportunities, cultural norms, access to training, and the distribution of care responsibilities.
• Women remain concentrated in lower-paid production, sewing and quality control roles, while men are more prevalent in higher-paid technical and supervisory positions – a key driver of persistent pay inequalities.
• The insights paper finds that limited measurement and disclosure of gender-disaggregated wage data continues to hinder companies’ ability to identify where inequality sits – and therefore to address it effectively.
• Ongoing economic pressures, including inflation and rising production costs, have placed sustained strain on the sector. Despite this, many manufacturers are making concerted efforts to maintain formal employment, comply with labour laws and protect jobs, demonstrating resilience in challenging conditions.

Closing gender pay gaps is not only a social imperative but a business one. Improving pay equity can strengthen workforce morale, retention and long-term resilience, while supporting alignment with evolving EU regulatory and buyer expectations. As EU pay transparency and due diligence requirements increasingly affect global supply chains, brands sourcing from Türkiye require greater visibility into wage practices across their supply chains.

Federica Marchionni, CEO of Global Fashion Agenda, says: “Pay equity is fundamental to build a fair and resilient fashion industry. This research shows that gender pay gaps in Türkiye’s fashion manufacturing sector are real, but they are also addressable. As progress depends on coordinated actions – from policymakers strengthening enabling frameworks, to brands adopting responsible purchasing practices, and suppliers embedding transparent, gender-responsive wage systems that reflect the realities of women’s working lives – GFA will continue to accelerate impact by mobilising the industry toward a more resilient future.”

The insights paper outlines practical recommendations for policymakers, brands, other buyers and suppliers. These include expanding access to childcare and parental support, strengthening formal employment and oversight of subcontracting, improving gender-disaggregated pay reporting, adopting responsible purchasing practices, and investing in women’s skills development and leadership pathways. Collectively, these actions can strengthen Türkiye’s manufacturing base, enhance women’s economic participation, and advance the fashion industry towards a net-positive future in which pay equity is a lived reality.

National Council of Textile Organizations (NCTO) President and CEO Kim Glas sent a letter House leaders urging them to oppose and block the Secure Revenue Clearance Channel Act, a bill that would essentially reopen a dangerous trade loophole and ultimately harm U.S. textile manufacturers.

“Last year through bipartisan action, Congress voted overwhelmingly to end de minimis after identifying the substantial harms it perpetrated,” Glas states in the letter to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (D-LA) and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY). “The House China Select Committee determined in 2023 that Chinese e-commerce platforms were flooding the U.S. with billions of dollars’ worth of goods but had paid $0 in import duties, while American companies comparatively spent millions. Additionally, these platforms were found lacking in due diligence mechanisms to verify that products were not tainted by forced labor in China.”

Last year, Congress passed bipartisan legislation codifying the end of de minimis, effective July 2027. The Trump administration also took action to close de minimis to all commercial shipments globally through executive order, which took effect at the end of August 2025.

“As a result, the volume of small package deliveries has dramatically decreased, duty collections are up, and American consumers and workers are better off,” the letter states.

“Despite clear action from Congress and the administration on the negative impact of express shipment programs for ‘small value’ packages at U.S. ports, some still want to provide duty relief to foreign importers while requiring less information on packages valued at up to $600 — making enforcement impossible and rewarding offshore producers,” the letter continues. “De minimis was labeled ‘China’s backdoor to the U.S.,’ facilitated by an environment where goods were cleared on manifest, packages were not properly inspected or levied duties, and the risk posed was extremely high. The Secure Revenue Clearance Channel Act would recreate many of these same problems, with China being the biggest winner.”

The National Council of Textile Organizations (NCTO), which represents the full U.S. textile supply chain from fiber and yarn to fabrics and finished sewn products, lauds a bill introduced today aimed at ending the U.S. Customs & Border Protection’s (CBP) “first sale” rule.

National Council of Textile Organizations President and CEO Kim Glas
“NCTO and the U.S. textile industry strongly support the Last Sale Valuation Act, a bill that would eliminate a harmful CBP rule that significantly lowers duties paid by importers on textile and apparel goods and disadvantages U.S. textile manufacturers in favor of countries that often employ predatory trade practices and fail to provide reciprocal market access.

“We sincerely thank Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) for their leadership on this bill. Closing this loophole will help level the playing field, bolster the U.S. textile industry, and spur more onshoring and investment here and in our Western Hemisphere.”

Luxembourg-based OCSiAl, the global leader in industrial synthesis of graphene nanotubes, announces the appointment of Antigone Loudiadis as a director.
 
An investment entity owned by Ms. Loudiadis made a substantial investment in OCSiAl at the end of 2025. This investment followed an investment earlier that year by a Luxembourg “club” of investors.
 
Ms. Loudiadis founded and led Rothesay Life, one of the UK’s leading pension insurers. Prior to the establishment of Rothesay Life, Ms. Loudiadis was a partner at Goldman Sachs International and cohead of its European Investment Banking Division. Over the course of her 30-year career as a senior financial executive, she led complex structured and M&A transactions and managed senior relationships with governments and multinational institutions.
 
“I am very excited to be joining OCSiAl,” said Ms. Loudiadis. “It’s cutting-edge deep tech that takes established industries—like tires and coatings—to a new level. But it also goes hand in hand with the next step in the development of EVs, data centers, AI, robotics and aerospace.”
 
“I am delighted to have Addy on the board. She brings a rare combination of deep capital markets expertise and firsthand experience in building and governing large, capital-intensive businesses,” said Peter Cuneo, Chairman of the OCSiAl Board. “As OCSiAl accelerates its industrial scale-up and prepares for significantly larger long-term investments, her perspective will be invaluable in shaping our capital strategy, strengthening governance, and engaging with a broader base of global investors.”
 
As advanced materials increasingly take on strategic importance alongside energy and capital, OCSiAl’s current phase of industrial scale-up places the company at the center of this shift.

ECHA Forum’s pilot enforcement project found that 19 % of the checked hazardous mixtures were not notified to poison centres.

Inspectors in 18 EU/EEA countries checked nearly 1 597 mixtures to verify whether industry complies with the obligation to notify hazardous mixtures to national poison centres. This is regulated under the EU’s Classification, Labelling and Packaging (CLP) Regulation. These notifications are crucial for poison centres to provide an adequate medical response in case of exposure to hazardous mixtures. Of all checked mixtures, 19 % were not notified to the authorities. 

Chris Van den hole, the Working Group Chair of this pilot project said: 
“Missing notifications of the necessary information to the poison centres undermine the effectiveness of emergency response. Therefore, inspectors take these findings very seriously and initiated numerous enforcement actions to bring companies to compliance.
“To improve the situation, we have listed recommendations for market actors, authorities and consumers in our report.”

The pilot project also aimed to raise the duty holders’ awareness of their legal obligations, for example, to place the Unique Formula Identifier (UFI) on the label of their products. The 16-digit, alphanumerical UFI code is a vital tool used by the poison centres to rapidly identify a mixture following an accidental poisoning. In 15 % of inspected mixtures, the required UFI was missing from the product label. 

Enforcement actions
Where non-compliance was detected, written advice was the most common enforcement measure applied by inspectors, followed by verbal advice, administrative orders, fines, and even criminal complaints. A number of cases were still under follow-up phase at time of reporting.

Background
According to the CLP Regulation, companies placing hazardous mixtures on the market are obliged to provide information about the composition of those mixtures to the appointed bodies. These bodies make this information available to poison centres so that they can give advice to the citizens or medical personnel in the event of an emergency. The duty to notify applies to mixtures that are classified for human health or physical hazards. For example, mixtures that are corrosive to skin, can cause eye damage or those that are explosive.

The names of companies that placed the controlled mixtures on the market and the products’ brand names were not reported for this project. The main purpose of the project was to harmonise and strengthen the national enforcement at the EU level.