Klinger Named VP of Board of Eco-Fashion Enterprise Jhoole
Julie Klinger, Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, was elected as Vice President of the Board for Jhoole, a fair-trade eco-fashion enterprise that works with women weavers and artisans in Maheshwar, India.
The Sarees from this region are famous throughout India and the Himalayas, but the women who produced them were not paid dignified wages, nor did they have any creative control over the design process. They could not afford to purchase the clothing they produced. Furthermore, their working conditions were unhealthy, precarious, and exploitative. Since 2008, the organization, which is headquartered in India with a non-profit arm in the United States, has raised over a million dollars and built a new production facility with on-site daycare where women can design and manufacture beautiful clothing and train others. The organization markets its clothing direct to consumers through an online platform at jhoole.org.
Currently, fifty women are employed, and over five hundred have been trained. For many women, this is the first opportunity to earn a living wage, which is especially important for divorced or widowed women who cannot rely on their families for support, according to Klinger.
“What I find so inspiring about this success story of sustainable development and livelihood transformation is the fact that its centerpiece is the joyfully empowered creation of beautiful things,” Klinger said. “Women artists from India, the US, Vietnam, and the UK collaborate to design, produce, and market the clothing collections.”
According to Klinger, their next goal is to raise $1.6 million to build an expanded campus which will include classroom space for training and seminars, as well as expanded daycare facilities and increased production capacity to meet demand for these gorgeous and ethically-produced goods.
“In the future, I would like to create opportunities for students focused on sustainable development, women’s empowerment, and grassroots entrepreneurship to work more closely with Jhoole in India and the US,” Klinger said. “This would expand the impact of the enterprise even further by lending student creativity to Jhoole, as well as showing students what it takes to successfully develop a collaborative, ethical, and successful social enterprise.”
Julie Michelle Klinger, PhD, specializes in development, environment, and security politics in Latin America and China in comparative and global perspective. Her recent book Rare Earth Frontiers: From Terrestrial Subsoils to Lunar Landscapes (Cornell University Press in Fall 2017) received the 2017 Meridian Award from the American Association of Geographers for its “unusually important contribution to advancing the art and science of geography.”