Fairtrade & Sustainability


Raising awareness of the role of women and displaced persons in the Iraqi labor market...

Chatting with workers in many of these shops, I learned that there is also a great deal of inequality, when it comes to working conditions. Male employees earn around $600 per month, while women only earn about $350 for the same work. If a shop has a bad month, the owners (who are always men) might decide to pay their employees only half their rightful salary. Sadly, sexual harassment is also a daily occurrence for many female employees, many of whom come from economically disadvantaged families or are what is known as “internally displaced persons” or refugees from elsewhere in Iraq.

After becoming aware of these issues, I decided to expand on my original goal: what if we could not only introduce high-quality lingerie to the Iraqi market, but also provide women with a safe workplace and fair wages? And that’s exactly what we did. In 2014, I quit my job in the Netherlands and started my own lingerie brand: Khanem. Our shop in Sulaymaniyah is run entirely by women and offers a safe, inviting environment where women can try on comfortable, sexy lingerie without having to worry about being spied on or intimidated.
Many of the products Khanem sells have to be imported from abroad, because we have been unable to source high-quality alternatives in Iraq. But rather than continuing to rely on imports, I felt it would make more sense to train local women to become professional designers, patternmakers, seamstresses and cutters, allowing us to produce garments locally. This would also enable them to earn their own money and support their families themselves rather than depending on their husbands, fathers, and brothers. They would also serve as role models for their daughters and for other women, helping to bring about desperately needed cultural change.

Collaboration with international partners…

With the help of the Dutch embassy and a highly dedicated team, we finally started training a group of 45 carefully selected women last June. As we worked with these women, we were inspired by their stories, their strength, their patience, and their fighting spirit. I have watched them learn and grow and have come to see just how important this project is and how much financial independence means to them.

AEREAS OF EXPERTISE

Impressions of my business trips