Global Fashion Agenda publishes report on pay equity in Türkiye’s garment sector

Global Fashion Agenda published Unpacking Pay Equity in Fashion: Türkiye and introduced it during a closed‑door industry roundtable at the OECD Forum on Due Diligence in the Garment and Footwear Sector in Paris, a PR Newswire release datelined PARIS, Feb. 12, 2026 said. The paper lands against a sector that employs nearly one million formally registered workers and contributes approximately 7.8 percent of Türkiye’s national GDP, underscoring why pay equity here matters for both livelihoods and supply chains.

The insight paper draws on a facility-level survey of 43 Turkish textile and apparel manufacturers, interviews with trade unions and worker associations, and expert input from the Social & Labor Convergence Program, the Fair Labor Association and the Anker Research Institute. SLCP noted on its LinkedIn page that “SLCP presented our data on pay equity and gender equality. GFA's paper builds on SLCP's aggregate data to generate further insights into the drivers of pay disparities in Türkiye. Congratulations to the GFA team!” Those same materials say the study was launched during the Paris roundtable where SLCP presented its data to industry stakeholders.

Sourcing Journal reports that GFA estimates Türkiye’s gender pay gap at between 15.6 percent and 17.4 percent, compared with an EU average near 12 percent. The paper highlights three structural drivers shaping pay outcomes: occupational segregation, care responsibilities and limited data visibility. Those are not abstract problems in the report’s telling; they are the friction points the authors marshal to explain why women are concentrated in lower paid production roles and why pay differentials persist across comparable jobs.

GFA pairs diagnosis with action. PR Newswire and GFA posts say the paper “offers practical recommendations to help brands, other buyers and suppliers align policies, purchasing practices and workplace realities in support of equal pay for equal work,” and calls for coordinated action across policy makers, brands, buyers and suppliers. Federica Marchionni, GFA CEO, put the stakes plainly when she said, “Pay equity is fundamental to build a fair and resilient fashion industry. This research shows that gender pay gaps in Turkey’s fashion manufacturing sector are real, but they are also addressable.”

The publication also arrived alongside other GFA activity in Türkiye, including an announcement of a Circular Fashion Partnership: Türkiye, signaling a parallel focus on textile waste and circularity in the same sourcing hub. With a resource library that already contains an Italy pay equity paper and tools such as the Fashion Impact Toolkit, GFA positions the Türkiye insight as part of an expanding program of regional pay equity work and upstream interventions that aim to convert survey data from 43 facilities into measurable changes on factory floors and in purchasing practices.

If the paper’s findings are to matter beyond headlines, brands and buyers sourcing from Türkiye will need to translate the recommendations into contract terms, wage reviews and better data collection across the nearly one million workers in the sector. GFA frames that work as both a social imperative and a resilience strategy for Europe’s major sourcing hub.