Where women lead the line: a new route to RMG supervision

For years, women have been the public face of Bangladesh's ready-made garments industry. The empowerment narrative is familiar. Yet on most production floors, women remain concentrated in helper and operator roles. Where day-to-day decisions are taken, the picture is stark. Only around 3 to 5% of supervisory posts are held by women, a share that was lower still a few years ago.

That gap has begun to attract sustained attention from brands and global buyers. Over the past five to seven years, buyer requirements on gender inclusion have prompted management to review who leads production lines and why. The message from the market is clear. Inclusion is tied to performance, compliance and reputation, and leadership matters as much as headcount.

BYETS, the Building Youth Employability Through Skills project, first focused on operator-level training for women. Factory managers then asked for something more targeted. They wanted a pathway that would take high-potential staff into first-line leadership. Some plants did not seek operator training at all, instead requesting a supervisory course open to women and to mixed cohorts.

The response is a Supervisory Skills Training course designed to link skills to progression and make local delivery the default. The course runs for 104 hours over one to two months. It was developed and piloted with an international consultant in eight factories using a single, transferable module. Early results led to a handover to CSS, the programme's training service provider, which is now rolling it out through local partners. Cohorts are intentionally mixed. The aim is to normalise women's authority in settings that mirror real production lines, and to build team dynamics that carry back onto the floor.

Delivery to date covers eight factories, with roughly 200 supervisors trained. The original plan was for about 80 participants, ten per factory. Demand outstripped those projections, so cohorts were expanded. The next phase is set to reach at least 10 additional factories, with an indicative throughput of a further 200 supervisors by January.

Cost, however, has been a persistent barrier. Reliance on international consultants priced many factories out of the service. BYETS has addressed this by capacitating local providers to deliver the same module at a lower cost, reducing both fees and scheduling bottlenecks. To help those providers enter the market and build a client base, the programme is subsidising engagement with two factories initially per provider. The objective is a training offer that can stand on its own commercially, with quality assured and price within reach for a broad range of factories.

A gender lens sits at the centre of the model. The issue is not only the number of women in the workforce. It is their absence from decisions that affect pay, productivity and working conditions. To close that gap, BYETS is prioritising women operators who have completed operator-level training and fast-tracking them into the supervisory pathway. Training is paired with assessment, and advanced modules are offered where specific gaps are identified, so that new supervisors step into roles with the skills and confidence to lead.

If the approach scales, three outcomes are within reach. First, a direct pipeline from operator roles to first-line leadership, especially for women. Second, closer alignment with buyer expectations on gender inclusion at the supervisory level. Third, a cost-effective, locally delivered training market that can be replicated across factories without constant external support.

Bangladesh's garment industry has already reshaped economic prospects for millions of women. The next shift is to ensure that experience translates into authority. By combining progression-focused training with local delivery and clear demand from factories, BYETS is helping move leadership opportunities from exceptional to expected.

The BYETS project is funded by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and implemented by Swisscontact.