For millions of workers in the garment industry, including women, receiving their wages digitally instead of in cash is a gateway to financial security and independence.

2024 Annual report: Collaborative Action toward Gender Equality in Supply Chains

In this guide for financial service providers developed by RISE and Mastercard, we share insights and recommendations to acquire new customers at scale through responsible wage digitalization; drive account usage of a range of financial products and services; and expand product offering to build financial security.

Key Points:

1. Women workers are underrepresented in leadership roles within factories in the Ready-made-Garment (RGM) supply chains 
2. Existing activities focused on workers’ and supervisors' capacity building to promote women to supervisory roles don’t fully match the expectations of workers or address their concerns  
3. There is an opportunity to explore a broader approach to supporting women’s advancement, beyond supervisory roles, that can get the buy-in of women and support longer term business needs.  

Celebrating its first anniversary on International Women’s Day, RISE is expanding its membership to accelerate its gender equality mission.

2023 has been an inspirational year from launch to integration to innovation. Read our Annual Report to learn about our work, impact and activities! 

In Cambodia, where only 33% of adults have a bank account (World Bank Global Findex 2021) and 85% of garment workers are women, many garment sector wages continue to be paid in cash. To better understand the opportunity for wage digitization in Cambodia, IFC partnered with BSR’s HERproject, under the IFC/ILO Better Work partnership, and in collaboration with Microfinance Opportunities. We studied the opportunities and challenges to digitize Cambodia’s garment factory wages through interviews and surveys with over 400 workers and managers from more than 100 factories. Half of the factories we selected to interview pay workers digitally and the other half pay workers in cash. 

Digitizing wages in Cambodia’s garment sector has the potential to drive efficiency in the supply chain, while bringing large numbers of unbanked workers, especially women, into the formal financial system. This blog details research by HERproject and IFC, under the ILO/IFC Better Work partnership, in close collaboration with Better Factories Cambodia and Microfinance Opportunities.