Women4Solutions: Co-Creating the Caring Economy

the CARING ECONOMY:

The Work of Care for People, Gender parity and

regeneration of the environment

A case study:

Hecho por Nosotros

&
Animaná

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Gender Parity and Caring for the environment is good business.

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION: 1
WHAT IS THE CARING ECONOMY? 2
WHAT IS GENDER PARITY IN THE CONTEXT OF GENDER EQUITY? 2
THE CASE OF HECHO POR NOSOTROS (HXN) AND ITS POSITIVE IMPACT IN THE CARIJNG ECONOMY IN THE
LAST TWO DECADES IN LATIN AMERICA 3
1. 6
SPECIFIC PROGRAMS AND ACTION BY HXN & ANIMANÁ FOR A CARING ECONOMY: 5
2. 10
3. 12
4. 17
CONCLUSION 16

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Gender Parity and Caring for the environment is good business.

Introduction
According to the International Labour Organization, today, women and girls are responsible
for over 75% of all unpaid care and domestic work globally, contributing over three times
more labour than men1. Despite the growing global recognition of this issue, organizations,
governments, and private enterprises often ignore the role that gender issues play in
democratic society. Indeed, there is still in the Twenty First Century gender disparity that
unequivocally exists among the work of care for people and in general issues regarding
gender equality in Latin America. In the article below, we will explore how the Hecho por
Nosotros (“HxN”) and the for-profit Animana - founded by Adriana Marina2 has in the
last two decades through her vision and by inventing creative initiatives in education and
metrics regarding the wellbeing of the textile industry workers, with whom they have worked
in the Latin American region for decades. They work towards a more sustainable future for
women workers and artisans, and their community with a clear mission based on the
regeneration of the environment. This is the case study of HxN and Animaná, and how they
have included women in the value chain and made visible in the the textile industry.

What is the caring economy?

It is an economic system that values and prioritizes social well-being, environmental

sustainability, and gender equality. It transcends traditional measures of economic success,
emphasizing human development, compassion, and empathy. Basically, it refers to an
economic and social framework that places a strong emphasis on the value and importance
of care work of people and the regeneration of the environment. It recognizes that to move
towards a more caring economy in the digital age, the focus on these four (4) pillars must be
the focus to advance a more Caring Economy that is to make more valuable and visible:
1. Care for the Environment
2. Care for Work of Care for people; The later includes caregiving activities, such as
child-rearing, eldercare, education from infants to youth, healthcare, and domestic
work, are essential for the well-being of individuals and communities
3. Education and re-skilling
4. Metrics are key to focus on the regeneration of the environment and the work of care
of people. What is measured can be changed and improved

1 International Labour Organization. How much time do women and men spend on unpaid care work?. Recovered from:

https://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/multimedia/maps-and-charts/enhanced/WCMS_721348/lang--22en/index.htm
2 The founder and leader, Adriana Marina’s, background in the agroindustry and her work with native communities equipped her with a

deep understanding of the challenges faced by these communities. With a doctorate in Development Economics, she recognized the
regressive impact of the textile industry on value chain integration and ecosystem degradation. In response, she founded HxN as a not-
for-profit to drive systemic change and Animaná as a for-profit to fund this change.
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Gender Parity and Caring for the environment is good business.

These four pillars are the focus of this article because they play a crucial role in supporting
economic and social development in a transformative way. Advocates of the caring economy
seek to rectify this by advancing policies that recognize and fairly compensate the care work,
promote gender equity responsibilities, and emphasize social and environmental
sustainability by placing people's well-being and the planet at the forefront of economic
systems, ultimately striving for a more just and sustainable world.

So, how did the Caring Economy started to become more valued and visisbilized? The
anthropologist Margaret Mead gives a clear example of how a person survived a broken
femur bone thanks to the care of others. Basically, civilization was formed with the
protection and caring of one individual for another. Without the help and support system of
others, the subject of Mead’s excavations would not have survived. Consequently, Mead
asserts that the act of caring for others was the first building block of human civilization. For
even more support on this, human brains according to many recent neuroscience studies
show that our mind is wired to care for others3.

Only in the last 40 years Riane Eisler, author4 and changemaker of the caring economy has
stonchly placed a lot of research on the subect for the last fourty years, creating the Center
for Partnership Studies and other activist movements in the policy arena.

What is gender parity in the context of gender equity?

Before exposing the HxN and Animaná case, we must delve into some contextual
background. Mainly, what do we mean by gender parity? is a complex and evolving concept
that has been discussed for a few decades, since the rise of human rights, labor laws,
feminism, and the suffrage movement. Today the debates on what gender parity is and what
it should look like is expanding and adapting to the new changes of our society, and involves
a strong movement of activists, policy makers and academics. Gender Parity, as defined by
the German Institute of Development and Sustainability is: “a statistical measure that
provides a numerical value of female-to-male or girl-to-boy ratio for indicators such as

3 Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy by Dev Patnaik
4 Thee Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics by Riane Eisler

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Gender Parity and Caring for the environment is good business.

income or education” (IDOS, pg 1)5. In this sense, gender parity is only a portion of gender
equality that evaluates the proportion of men and woman in the benefit, and other categories
in several roles or aspects of society. Gender equality is a wider concept that goes beyond
the numeric differences and focuses on the societal creation of gender identities, on the
experiences of women and diversity in society and other anthropological and social aspects
of equality.

Gender and diversity issues in general, are transversal aspects and must be considered in
any attempt to make a systemic change. Since we will be discussing the impact HxN has had
in the textile industry, it is therefore important to understand Gender Disparity in this context.
Low paid women workers have historically been relegated to the lowest levels of this
industry’s value chain6. Indeed, a report by the International Labor Organization (OIT)
clarifies that women tend to be in the most vulnerable positions because they usually get paid
significantly less than men for the same type of work, have less rights in workplace, less
recognition for their skilled work and are as well at a higher risk to suffer from sexual abuse
in the workplace than men. Informal and temporary work is still a trend, and although
women make up the majority of the world's garment workforce, their representation in labour
organizations is minimal.

Additionally, most women do not have access to higher-earning positions that include
administrative or corporate jobs. On the other hand, women tend to have less access to
education or economic independence which would allow them to grow within the industry.
In this way, the ILO identifies the four biggest challenges for gender equality within the
textile industry: a). Women's voices are not heard. b). There is no equity of payment. (c).
Women's dependence on domestic work such as family care, household maintenance, etc.
(d). Women are radically more exposed to sexual violence at work than men.7

5
Manlosa, Aisa / Denise Margaret Matias (2018) FROM GENDER PARITY TO GENDER EQUALITY: CHANGING WOMEN’S LIVED
REALITIES. IDOS: German Institute of Development and Sustainability; The Current Column
6 Els Hiemstra-Kuperus, Lex Heerma van Voss, Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk (2009). The Ashgate Companion to the History of

Textile Workers, 1650–2000. Routledge 2009.

7 International Labour Organization (2023) How to achieve gender equality in global garment supply chains. Recovered from:

https://www.ilo.org/infostories/en-GB/Stories/discrimination/garment-gender#introduction

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Gender Parity and Caring for the environment is good business.

The Case of Hecho por Nosotros (HxN) and its positive impact
in the last two decades in Latin America
HxN is a non-governmental organization born in Argentina in 2008 together with Animaná;
A trade committed to the environment and the production of sustainable clothing. With a
workforce of about 30 people and over 2,500 volunteers, HxN works in partnership with
other organizations with the objective to transform the textile industries’ value chain into an
inclusive, diverse and sustainable one. In it’s most basic form, HxN reaches out to artisan
communities around Latin America, creates educating platforms and offers economic
independence to artisan women who are offered the opportunity to co create apparel with a
universal and atemporal design through online store Animaná.

In the next section of this article, we will expand how HxN helps confront the challenge of
environmental degradation, gender disparity and metrics of these issues. The structure of the
article is based on the four principles that Women4Solutions works in; Care for the
environment, Care for the work of care; Education; Metrics. Additionally, since HxN has
consultative status in the UN, it is committed to serve as an effective platform to advance the
Agenda 2030 of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These are the main SDGs that HxN
works with; SDG 1: End Poverty, SDG 4: Quality Education, SDG5 5: Gender Equality,
SDG 8: Decent Work Conditions and Economic Growth, SDG 10: Reduce Inequalities, SDG
12: Responsible Consumption and Production, SDG 13: Climate Action, SDG 17:
Partnerships to achieve the goals. We will explain them in further detail in the following
sections, as well as how they are linked to HxN’s programs and initiatives.

1. Care for the Environment: regeneration & re-skilling

First of all, it is key to understand the relation between the environment, gender disparity and
the Caring Economy. The Caring Economy, as explained above, is based in the very basic
idea of caring. Taking care of our surroundings weather that be the family and immediate
relatives, or of our planet, as Dimitria Electra Gatzia explains: “The ethics of care, on the
other hand, emphasizes personal relationships among individuals in their communities and
takes interdependence as a necessary condition for achieving individual interests” (Gatzia,
E. 2011, Towards a Caring Economy, Springer Science+Business Media B.V., pg. 1),
indicating the importance of interdependence in the economic system. This involves
understanding our relationship to this planet not in terms of resources we can use for our
endless technological and industrial growth but transforming such relationship into one of
care and sustainability.
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Gender Parity and Caring for the environment is good business.

Advancing into a more circular economy where we can guarantee a safe and prosperous
future for the coming generations is a key to achieving equality in all fronts, including of
course gender equality. Indeed, the relationship between gender and the environment is well
documented. As UNEP puts it: “Women play a critical role in sustaining communities and
managing natural resources […] Women are also more likely than men to live in poverty,
and they are more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and other environmental
hazards.” (UNEP, Recovered from: https://www.unep.org/explore-topics/gender/why-does-
gender-matter).

Additionally, several researchers have found that women tend to be more concerned with
climate change and environmental issues -given that they experience the negative impact in
their business and family8 - than men in general and are usually more involved in green
organizations and have a larger consciousness of the sustainability crisis we are currently
facing. Despite this, most decision makers and environmental stakeholders are men,
including world leaders, company CEOs and Non Governmental Organization leaders.9
Furthermore, there is a differentiated way in which women relate to the environment than
men, not only in relation to the effects of climate change, but also in the way they see and
understand their physical surroundings.

Regarding the first issue, women and children are more likely to be in vulnerable situations
than men, including poverty. This means, that the lack of access to water, natural disasters,
extreme weather, and other terrible climate change effects affect women in particular ways.
regarding the second, in most societies today, women have traditionally been responsible for
managing natural resources, including water management and waste management10, but also
there has historically been a linkage between women and the domestic sphere. Hence, no
only women have developed a more caring relationship to resources such as water, but also
that they tend to be more conscious about consuming eco-friendly products that are related
to housekeeping, child caring and other activities that take place inside the house. This
explains why most eco-friendly campaigns in the market today are aimed at women. It is also
closely related to the caring economy, since all these activities are related to the work of care.

8 The Fuller Project and many other reports - https://fullerproject.org/story-category/environment-climate-

change/?gclid=CjwKCAjw38SoBhB6EiwA8EQVLjSpmaNIbP633q42qY5lSFS8Ms6yESAN63czUreFGkABd6FUDf_8lBoC1wIQAvD_BwE
9 Center for Applied Cross Cultural Research (2019): Why do women care more about the environment than men?. Wellington, New Zealand.

Recovered from: https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/1776422/Why_do_women_care_more_about_the_environment_than_men.pdf

10 OSCE: Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (2009) Gender And Environment. Recovered from:

https://www.osce.org/files/f/documents/4/f/36360.pdf

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Gender Parity and Caring for the environment is good business.

The case of HxN and Animaná

The case of HxN is a great example to highlight not only the good work of organizations to
fight for sustainability, but also to include women in the process. HxN & Animaná work hard
to promote a circular economy in the textile industry, starting from the very bottom up to the
very top. ¿How? They use four main strategies: Institutional Advocacy, Capacity Building,
Co Creation, and Organic Production. Let’s take a closer look.

Institutional Advocacy: Hecho x Nosotros and Animaná are big believers of open dialogue,
creating spaces where change makers from all around the world can exchange ideas and
solutions, and to make visible grassroot voices in high level political events where
stakeholders may finally hear what the lowest in the value chain have to say. This includes
generating spaces such as the parallel event in the High Level Political Forum of the UN in
July of 2023, where many important figures and changemakers united to discuss everything
surrounding sustainability in the textile industry including gender. Another good example
was the Changemaker Summit G20, where the same happened. These spaces are used to
promote sustainable solutions in order to make a real systemic change, and to expand the
network of stakeholders that are involved in said solutions. In short, Hecho x Nosotros works
as a link between the artisans and grassroot producers, and the big decision makers, creating
consciousness and promoting new ways to advance the industry in circular and responsible
ways.

Capacity Building: There is a special effort from the organization to educate the consumer,
stakeholder and the artisan in sustainability and market strategies that can be circular. Hecho
x Nosotros and Animaná, as a traceable and transparent organization, offers different courses
on diverse topics ranging from sustainable design, access to markets, finance, and responsible
consumer behavior, aimed at every actor in the supply chain of the industry. They have also
tirelessly worked towards creating virtual spaces and platforms where all these actors can
connect and share insights, facilitating the grassroots with access to investors, political
decision makers and consumers, and also sharing the importance of sustainability and the
capacity of circular designs and responsible market strategies to change the way we buy and
sell clothes around the world.

A good example of capacity building and its major impact is the Huánuco project that HxN
commanded. In this project, lending institution IOV Labs used decentralized, blockchain
technology to finance an entire artisan community in Peru with the goal of increasing
financing to female-led micro, small and medium sized businesses, artisans, and associations
in an attempt to overcome major gender disparities found in the region as well as empower
local producers to gain terrain in the industry.
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Gender Parity and Caring for the environment is good business.

For the pilot project, each artisan was loaned U$500. A timeframe of 180 days was
established in which the products produced from this loan had to be sold and repayments had
to be made, with an interest rate of 3% and it was agreed that the credit could be renewed on
a quarterly basis. In order to access the loans the artisans were required to have a bank
account, a smartphone and have participated in HxN capacity-building programs, in relation
to financial tools. This technology helped the community sell their products at a fair price
through Animaná. The result of this project was the insertion of organic, sustainable designs
that were locally produced into the global fashion market, making a major change in the
industry. It also had a gender approach, since most of the beneficiaries were women. It
concluded that economic independence for women was an essential step towards equality.

Other projects where HxN has participated have also included technology to help advance
gender parity in the caring work. The Full Fem Project is a good example. The aim of the
investigation was to use online seminars and courses and creating virtual spaces where
women could be trained and educated in market strategies, artisan techniques, access to
financing and other important skills required to be a part of the textile industry of today. The
final product of Full Fem was the creation of the platform: E Artisan Edu: a training center
but also an exchange platform where women could connect and network with each other.
This is important for the environment because the work of woman artisans tends to be much
more sustainable and eco-friendlier than that of major factories. Their inclusion and fair pay
make the industry undeniably more sustainable.

Co Creation & Partnerships: Through the NGOs consultancy program, HxN has been
improving, scaling-up and designing actions with several MSMEs around the world. We
helped spreading sustainable and circular business models in the fashion industry: not only
looking for investment returns but also searching for a holistic impact on social, economic,
and environmental development. The consultancy program is intended to help these
enterprises improve their management, scale up their businesses, reach new customers, and
align with brands requirements such as design & certifications.

Organic Textile Production: Certified B Crop Animana, a luxury fashion brand founded by
Adriana Marina, also the CEO of HxN sells clothing that are guaranteed to be made from
organic fibers, mainly: camelid fibers, organic cotton and Linen, all originating from the
Patagonia and the Andean region. They design timeless and universal clothes that challenge
the idea of “fast fashion” and rely on a sustainable concept of apparel, one that can coexist
with the world’s natural resources and that can include women workers in an equal and
responsible way.

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Gender Parity and Caring for the environment is good business.

In summary, HxN has been committed for over 10 years to take care of the environment and
to pursue a better future in the fashion industry by advocating for a circular economy in
globally renowned spaces, by using technology and investigation to come up with smart
solutions and include local producers in the textile value chain, by educating and reskilling
workers and artisans, as well as consumers and by committing to the use of natural and
organic fibers to create atemporal and universal designs that can disrupt the unsustainable
and unfair textile industry.

Of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals, the following are being

tackled by HxN:

● SDG 1: No Poverty: Through the creation of training and opportunities for

connections among women artisan (who are now frequently marginalized, poorly
paid and have little imput into their working conditions) to improve their economic
situation, especially seen in the Full Fem Project and the Huanuco Project.
● SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production: By promoting organic textile
production and sustainable fabrics, but also by educating artisans and consumers on
eco-friendly fashion, that is meant to be universal and beyond season trends so it can
truly be sustainable.
● SDG 13: Climate Action: The entire platform of HxN is based on the imminent need
to work towards a friendlier textile industry for the eco system. This is why all
Animana’s products are organic, and the entire value chain of the commerce is
circular.
● SDG 17: Partnerships to achieve goals: HxN is very big on co creating. They firmly
believe that by creating alliances with artisan communities, NGOs, governments and
universities they will be able to move the project forward.
● SDG 8: Decent work conditions and economic growth: Especially visible in the
Huanuco project, Animana offers their creative partners a fair payment and an equal
access to the market, promoting circular practices.

2. The Importance to visibilize & value the “work of care” for

people

Despite an increasing consciousness of the important economic and social input of the care
of work, it remains mainly unpaid work for women around the world. In fact, according to
the International Labour Organization, there are 16.4 billion hours a day are spent in unpaid

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Gender Parity and Caring for the environment is good business.

care work around the world, accounting for 9% of the global GDP11. Old stereotypes and
power structures have helped to maintain a system where women typically have household
tasks and do most of the domestic work, since women 15 and older spend on average 3.2
times more than men in said tasks. This unbalanced unpaid work of care results in wide
gender disparity among the economic system. In the textile industry, it is no different.
Women artisans are often faced with challenges to sell and market their products because in
many cases, their artwork is seen not as an economic activity, but a womanly duty. This is,
in part, a reason why women in the fashion industry are usually relegated to the lowest paid
links of the value chain12. In order to face this problem, HxN has adopted a strategy based
on empowering, educating and re skilling women artisans around Latin America by arming
them with digital tools, including them in online platforms where they have access to market
investors, producers, distributors, and consumers, and in some cases even financing their
small businesses and giving them the opportunity to sell them through Animaná, a luxury
fashion brand and partner corporation of HxN.

The case of HxN

HxN has focused on the empowering women and offering them opportunities to market their
craft. This has been achieved through education programs and by financing small
entrepreneurs in the Latin American continent. The idea of said programs is to give economic
independence and power to the woman worker as well as arm them with new market skills
and online platforms where they can put these skills to good use. As was well described in
the chapter above, HxN has an important capacity building program that is focused on
sustainability and women empowerment, as well as well constructed finance projects that
have instrumented women with enough funds to produce and sell their work (see pages 5 and
8). This relates to the care of people because one of the main obstacles these women have to
push their business forward is their duty to the household tasks, including child care, house
cleaning, cooking, etc. The economic advantages of their artisan crafts has been relegated to
second place, at best. In this scenario, the best alternative is to give them enough
independence through both funding, but also seminars that include market strategies but also
gender specific courses where they learn to break old stereotypes and build new identities.

In the fight against disparity, it is then vital that low paid woman workers and artisans in the
lowest links of the textile industry value chain to have a bigger exposure to market
11 Government of Canada (2022). Changing the balance for Women in the Care Economy. Recovered from:
https://www.international.gc.ca/world-monde/stories-histoires/2022/balance-care-equilibre-domestique.aspx?lang=eng
12 Els Hiemstra-Kuperus, Lex Heerma van Voss, Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk (2009). The Ashgate Companion to the History of

Textile Workers, 1650–2000. Routledge 2009.

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Gender Parity and Caring for the environment is good business.

opportunities. The consumer is an essential part in this process. Around the world, there has
been a changing behavior of consumers to “conscious consumers” forcing leaderships to
express their voice through the decisions they make in their purchases of products or
services. The imperative of “caring” is too strong to be ignored because businesses are
realizing that they are failing to meet customers’ needs. Both Millennials and Gen Z
respond agree almost unanimously that businesses must care for the environment, their
employees and society. Today businesses are finally listening to consumers’ needs and
values and not only are they moving to accommodate them, but they are also running to do
so out of fear for their relevance. In this regard, HxN and Animana are pioneers. Information
on the grassroot production, organic fiber recollection, design, transportation and selling
process can be accessed on their webpage, guaranteeing their consumer that they are indeed
buying sustainable products.

Of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals, the following are being

tackled by HxN::
● SDG 5: Gender equality: working on reducing stereotypes and merchandising
women’s hard work around artisan communities in Latin America, as well as
including them in the value chain of the textile industry is a vital step to advance
equality.
● SDG 10: Reduce inequalities: As HxN works to give women better opportunities they
also work towards reducing the gender gap in the textile industry, thus reducing the
inequalities that exist between man and woman. Similarly, HxN believes in the
transformation of the textile industry into one that is circular and therefore, includes
peasant communities that are usually overlooked by the big factories.

3. Education & Re-skilling in the Digital Era

The relation between education and gender parity, as well as the Caring Economy is a long
and well-studied one. Educating women is key not only to secure the advancement of gender
parity around the world but also to move our economy, social institutions, and political
ideologies forward. In 2018, a research was published by GPE that illustrated that: “human
capital wealth could increase by almost 22% globally with gender equality in earnings”
(Wodon, Q; De La Briere, B, 2018; The Cost of Gender Inequality; Unrealized potential: The
High Cost of Gender Inequality In Earnings, pg. 7). Yet, 129 million girls worldwide are out
of school (UNICEF). Hence, education becomes a pillar in any concept of the economy of
care, based on the idea that learning is caring.

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Gender Parity and Caring for the environment is good business.

The case of HxN & Animana

HxN has been a pioneer in this aspect. Since the genesis of the organization, they have placed
special emphasis on education, not only in matters of re-skilling and capacity building but
also to educate consumers. In recognition that the artisans the organization works with have
been excluded from the textile industry value chain, especially women, HxN has worked
towards creating spaces and including communities in platforms that try to bring them back
into the scene with a protagonist character. Indeed, historically, women have been relegated
to the lowest positions in the textile industry, giving way to a male dominated market, despite
most of the workforce being women. In part, this is due to a lack of education and skill
building. Historically, men have received a more market directed education, as well as the
opportunities to expand their knowledge on apparel production, from the very basic processes
of spinning to finances, business administration, etc.13 Women, on the other side, have stayed
with the lesser paying positions, holding a wage gap of almost 30% by 199914, and all though
they constitute the majority of the working labor in the industry, they are extremely under
represented in labor unions and other organizations. Partly, this is due to prejudices that place
the burden of the household and care responsibilities on the woman of the family, alienating
her from any real education opportunities.

HxN's commitment to education is at the core of its transformative efforts. Over the years,
the organization has incorporated sustainability education into its "Re-skilling" programs
delivered through digital platforms. By highlighting the interconnectedness of environmental
sustainability with various disciplines, HxN empowers women, families, and communities
involved in farming, weaving, and design with the tools needed to pioneer change through
technological innovations. HxN has addressed the educational vacuum by conducting
workshops, establishing digital networks, and re-skilling artisans. Collaborating with over
7,000 artisans and 300 Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in regions such as Patagonia,
the Andean region, the Wayuu indigenous community in Northern Colombia, Huanúco, Peru,
and Santiago de Estero, Argentina, HxN has played a pivotal role in improving the
capabilities of these communities.

The organization's environmental programs aim to:

● Educate women farmers and SMEs in basic business skills, digital literacy, and
innovative regenerative technologies.

13 Els Hiemstra-Kuperus, Lex Heerma van Voss, Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk (2009). The Ashgate Companion to the History of Textile Workers, 1650–
2000. Routledge 2009.
14 Alessandro Nicita, Susan Razzaz (2003). Who Benefits and how Much?: How Gender Affects Welfare Impacts of a Booming Textile Industry,
World Bank Publications.
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Gender Parity and Caring for the environment is good business.

 ● Foster regenerative models in the textile industry to combat soil degradation.
● Promote water conservation systems and decarbonization.

These environmental programs empower artisans to maximize benefits from e-commerce,

expand their collaborative networks, and introduce them to new working relationships.
Capacity-building programs, virtual seminars, and online workshops have facilitated artisan
and community participation.

Furthermore, HxN is focused on completing major projects that emphasize the importance
of education such as the Full Fem Project. The objective is to continually achieve social and
economic empowerment of women working at different stages of the apparel value chain
while improving their agency and market access through a re-skilling process. In addition,
it combines targeted - on the ground participatory training methodologies with basic
technology tools that enable beneficiaries, mostly women, to learn through information
technology, and to use that technology to upgrade their business capacity, their agency and
market access. One of the most important assets developed through this project is the creation
of an innovative collaborative, trilingual web-based platform to provide training and
resources for A.W.Es (Artisans Workers and Entrepreneurs) working in the apparel, leather
and textile industry in Colombia, Bolivia and Peru. This online space, called “E-Artisan
Edu” includes forums, an online library, a coach/brand match center powered by local
partners and access to consultation or service referral around transversal issues that affect
women (family planning, health, security etc.). To ensure that women economic
empowerment is truly developed through access and agency; given the different degree of
comfort with technology, “E-Artisan Edu” is complemented by a series of off-line activities
such as: a series of capacity-building trainings, including train the trainer trainings (TOT)
that are run by each country partner both: on-site and hybrid (combining on the ground
training in the ethical fashion circuit.

University Level Education Programs: HxN has an impressive higher education program
where they create alliances with over 50 universities around the world, including IAE,
University of Palermo, Austral University and University of Buenos Aires. With them, HxN
organizes projects and internship programs that can educate both young students on
sustainable design and an eco-friendly textile industry, as well as artisans and local producers.
This year alone, they organized a program with Conserve India and Windesheim Honours
College. Since 2021, HxN collaborates with the Newham Environmental Justice Society in a
design workshop in the Cambridge University, England that offered students an opportunity
to learn about eco-design thought experiential process, promoting reflection and tools for
change on the issues that the textile industry is currently facing. As well, HxN University of

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Social Change15 is an online space dedicated to the creative economy and arts by
emphasizing sustainability and market strategies. Another important initiative in 2020 that
HxN was leading is the creation of the Arts and Offices University in Argentina, with
financial aid from the Argentinian Ministry of Social Development that has a virtual space
where people from all walks of life could interact, interconnect, and have access to training
on eco-design, organic processes, and sustainable business scaling.

Technology in the hands of artisans: With access to education, women are able to scale up
their businesses, to learn about modern market tendencies and strategies and to be better
equipped to compete with men in their same line of work. In order to do this it has become
vital to use the advancing technology in the hands of women workers.

In 2021, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, HxN and Animaná –- ran a project in the region of
Huánuco, Peru in an attempt to overcome some of the barriers that women face in the
industry to provide and increase the micro-financing to female-led micro, small and medium
sized businesses, artisans and associations. This project gave women financial education and
access to financing guarantees which is very difficult to come across in the artisan
communities of Latin America and is key to their progress and their family wellbeing.
Women as in many rural areas, are at an economic disadvantage and usually depend on their
spouses or other male relatives for any financing. Through these micro-loans program that
consisted in giving each artisan a revolving loan of US$500, timeframe of 180 days for
repayments with a 3% interest rate. To access the loans, the artisans were required to have a
bank account, a smartphone and have participated in HxN capacity-building programs, in
relation to financial tools and digital re-skilling.

At the closing of this pilot-program, the results showed overwhelming positive data that
demonstrate that it is crucial to continue to provide financial education and micro-financing
to women led enterprises and woman artistry to fight against digital exclusion. Indeed, in this
new era of technology, the gender gap is also visible, and it shows that women have less
access to digital tools than men, mainly because they have less access to education. Breaching
this financial and educational gap is vital to achieve any kind of gender equality. This
emphasizes the importance of new technologies such as blockchain because it offers the
opportunity to finance female-led enterprises allowing direct loan deployment. The
possibility to establish platforms with government, NGOs or private providers could make
the transaction process and transparency function with less friction and offer artisans a better
chance to scale their business. HxN has used said technology in the project described above

15
https://hxnmeetings.wixsite.com/toolkit/hxn-university
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Gender Parity and Caring for the environment is good business.

and arrived at the conclusion that these disruptive technologies are crucial for the
advancement of female economic independence in the countryside of Latin America.

Educating the consumer: Complementing this, Hecho x Nosotros alongside with Animaná
have an impressive program to reach and educate the consumer so that both ends of the value
chain may reconnect, interact, and eventually, co-create.

In Animanás very own words: “Our vision is to be a bridge between the inhabitants of big
cities and the artisans of the Andes” (UNEP; Igniting Change, the case study of Animaná and
Hecho x Nosotros). Every two weeks they host in person and online talks and workshops on
how to make the most of the items purchased, how to treat at home the different fabrics, how
to re-use them, the different kinds of natural dyeing, etc. As well, they host conversations
about their projects with artisans and showing the work that is behind the HxN and Animana
brand. Inviting all their large network of clients, partners, collaborators, students and friends,
and through social media, newsletter and mouth to mouth, Animaná spreads the word about
their valuable work and to create a collective consciousness.

Of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals, the following are being

tackled by HxN:

● SDG 4: Quality education: The most important SDG that HxN tackles is this one. It
has used most of its resources to make information on sustainable design, market
strategies and circular economy available and accessible to consumers, producers,
and designers. It has created educational online platforms and offered seminars and
workshops to artisan communities around Latin America.

● SDG 5: Gender Equality: HxN has worked to bring equal educational opportunities
to both men and woman, all though understanding that through a gender lens, there
is always a differentiated way in which inequality and climate change affects both.

● SDG 12: Responsible consumption and production: HxN’s educational programs

foster the ideas of sustainable economic growth.

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 4. Metrics: What we measure can be improved and changed
The Case of HxN: The Women Empowerment Principles (WEPs)
One way to measure gender parity is the WEPs (Women Empowerment Principles),
established by UN Women. The WEPs are informed by international labour and
human rights standards and grounded in the recognition that businesses have a
stake in, and a responsibility for, gender equality and women’s empowerment16.
The seven WEPs have been implemented by HxN and Animana and the results speak of their
very high impact in gender parity in the region. What follows are a summary of each of the
seven WEPs based on HxN and Animana:

● High Level Corporate Leadership: in addition to the high level positions that women
hold, including CEO Adriana Marina, HxN has vehemently strengthening this principle
in the local communities it operates on. Through the Full Fem Project and the Huanúco
Project (both explained above), HxN has given women the ability to take ownership of
their own businesses. In fact, the organization was selected by WISE Latin America a
few years back for a mentorship program, whose final goal is to encourage leadership
and entrepreneurship among women and support high social and environmental impact
business initiatives.

● Treat all women and men fairly at work without discrimination; HxN has focused on
giving women a better opportunity to compete for same work with men. As was
mentioend above, the wage gap in the textile industry is still high and most women don’t
have the same working conditions as men. HxN has tried to empower and educate women
economic independence through projects like the Huanúco Project that used blockchain
technology to finance artisan women in Peru. To quote a Communication of Progress
report published by HxN in 2022: “We dedicate our daily work to inform about these
principles for everyone involved in this industry.”

● Employee health, wellbeing, and safety; HxN does not directly manage women safety
issues such as sexual violence, armed conflicts and other problems that Latin American
countries have to face, however it does offer seminars that address and re-skill women
and their employers the important safety issues for women, including family planning.

● Education and Training for Career Advancement; It has been explained throughout
this chapter the impacts that HxN has had in education and training. The organization

16
WEPs, Recovered from: https://www.weps.org/principle/enterprise-development-supply-chain-and-marketing-practices
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● focuses most of its resources on organizing seminars and workshops. In fact, over 8,500
artisans have participated in said seminars across the Latin American region.

● Enterprise Development, Supply Chain and Marketing Practices; UN Women states

that: “Advertising is a powerful driver to change perceptions and impact social norms –
portraying women and men in modern, authentic, and multidimensional roles.
Companies can also influence business partners through inclusive supply chain policies
and standards of engagement.”17 HxN is a master at these strategies. They have used
Animaná to not only sell sustainable and locally produced apparel to the wider global
fashion market globally, giving power to women artisans they work with, but they also
promote multiple events in different platforms for the past decades, including the UN
High Level Political Forum or the Catalyst for Change, where they advocate consumers,
producers, investors and other companies to join in the fight to make the value chain more
integrated and sustainable. They also offer artisans seminars and workshops on market
strategies and business scaling, to improve the value chain of the industry.

● Community Initiatives and Advocacy; Investing in the community HxN and Animana
operate is the base mission. They have worked for over a decade in different artisan and
indigenous communities in Argentina, Peru, Bolivia, and Colombia, to empower said
communities and re-integrate them into the value chain.

● Measurement and Reporting; HxN and Animaná are “radically transparent”

organization, which means that through Animaná’s webpage you can follow the
production and path of all their products, from grassroot to the final product. All the
information of Animaná’s industrial process is public information available online,
inspiring the consumer to values and seek transparency as much as they do in all their
future purchases. They have implemented new quantitative initiatives that seek to collect
more numeric data in order to conduct better seminars and workshops.

HxN value chain TOOLKIT metrics

On the other hand, HxN has built a way to maintain its production process open, transparent
and traceable. They have begun to implement an online platform they call the Toolkit.
Created in order to guarantee a circular process where all parts of the textile industry value
chain can access good, sustainable practices, as HxN states:…

17
WEPs, Recovered from: https://www.weps.org/principle/enterprise-development-supply-chain-and-marketing-practices
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Gender Parity and Caring for the environment is good business.

“Through our proposed platform, we plan to deliver circular sustainable solutions to
designers, producers and fashion practitioners.” (HxN, 2020)18.

The next figure showcases the three bases of the Toolkit; designed to incorporate artisans,
designers, investors, distributors, and consumers.

Source: HxN unpublished documents

Moreover, this figure represents the long-term plan that HxN has for the Toolkit project,
clearly directing it towards an online, technological website that is circular and traceable.

18 HxN Toolkit (2020). Recovered from; https://www.hechoxnosotros.org/toolkit

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Gender Parity and Caring for the environment is good business.

Source; HxN unpublished documents

As a result, HxN is working to build a transparent online platform where all sectors of the
value chain can participate. When this is finally achieved, they will have the instruments to
implement stricter measuring standards, as well as a transparent model that could be used in
other contexts by other organizations. In summary, the Toolkit is the ideal metrics project, a
system that registers every single step in the process of creating, designing, selling, and
distributing sustainable apparel.

Of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals, the following are being

tackled by HxN:
● SDG 5: Gender equality: The WEPS are an essential tool to transform business practices
and make them more inclusive and diverse, where women have better and fairer
opportunities.
● SDG 13: Climate Action: Developing structures such as the toolkit, are vital to promote
climate action around the world.
● SDG 10: Reduction of inequalities: measuring inequality around the world and creating
transparent and traceable programs to fight it that are replicable is a wonderful way to
fight for this SDG.

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Gender Parity and Caring for the environment is good business.

Conclusion: Advancing the Caring Economy in the Textile
Sector
The case of HxN and the for-profit enterprise Animana demonstrates how organizations can
play a pivotal role in advancing the Caring Economy and addressing gender disparity in the
textile industry. In a world where women still bear the brunt of unpaid care and domestic
work, HxN and Animana have emerged as champions of change, working towards a more
sustainable and equitable future for women workers and artisans in Latin America.

The Caring Economy, with its focus on environmental sustainability, gender equality, and
social well-being, provides a framework for understanding the complex interplay of care for
the environment, care for the work of care, education, and metrics. HxN and Animana
embody these principles through their innovative initiatives, creating a blueprint for
transformative change.

Their commitment to environmental regeneration and re-skilling exemplifies their dedication

to addressing the intertwined issues of gender, environment, and economic development. By
empowering women artisans and connecting them with digital tools and markets, they break
down the barriers that have traditionally relegated women to lower-paid positions in the
textile industry.

Education and re-skilling are at the core of HxN's efforts, and their partnerships with
universities and capacity-building programs empower women to challenge stereotypes and
build new identities. By addressing the educational gap and providing financial support, HxN
is instrumental in giving women economic independence and a stronger voice in the textile
industry.

Furthermore, HxN and Animana's commitment to educating consumers fosters a sense of

responsibility and awareness, connecting city dwellers with the artisans in the Andes. This
collective consciousness fosters a deeper understanding of the value of sustainable practices
and the importance of supporting women in the textile industry.

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Gender Parity and Caring for the environment is good business.

In a world where the work of care remains predominantly unpaid or undervalued and not
vassalized as a key activity for the development of our society at large, HxN and Animana
serve as beacons of hope. They prove that by embracing the principles of the Caring
Economy and addressing gender disparity, we can move toward a more just and sustainable
world. Their work in the Latin American textile industry offers a model for transformative
change, emphasizing the importance of caring for the environment, caring for the work of
care, education, and the metrics that measure our progress toward a more equitable future.

Co-authors:

Laura G. Koch, Founder and CEO of Women4Solutions, a global organization

that seeks to scale, simple and effective solutions towards a Caring Economy.

Catalina Ospina, International Relations graduate, published poetry author, Media

Associate of Women4Solutions and collaborator with HxN.

October 2023

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