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“Empowering Women is in our DNA,” proclaims a post from fashion brand Gap Inc. But a closer look at Gap’s actual policies and practices show that its commitment is only skin deep. And, in the lead up to International Women’s Day, Gap is under fire from women’s rights organizations for supporting the illegal firing of  pregnant women and women union leaders at one of its Haitian suppliers, the Wilbes factory. Despite its hollow written commitments to women’s empowerment, Gap has continued to back its supplier’s illegal actions –  leaving the women who sewed its clothes without remedy. 

In this post, we’ll examine the depth of Gap’s supposed commitment to women’s empowerment, and how the case of the Willbes factory in Haiti is not the first evidence of its backsliding on women’s and workers’ rights.

Gap’s P.A.C.E. Program: Vague Buzzwords Not Real Commitment

Gap launched its Personal Advancement & Career Enhancement (P.A.C.E.) program in 2007. An estimated 80% of the world’s garment workers are women and the vast majority of them live in poverty; only an estimated 2% earn a living wage. Gap’s solution to the problem: launch a training curriculum and evaluation system focused on  “life-skills.”¹ The program was rolled out in factories in Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, and Vietnam by 2016. By 2017, the program was expanding with additional curriculum focused on girls ages 13-17, with a “focus on improving self-identity and self-confidence, and will help girls develop goals and aspirations for the future,” through pilot programs in Haiti and India.  

Reading the self-reported results, it’s easy to question whether the program actually changed peoples’ behavior, or if it merely made them more likely to check the appropriate boxes on a survey. 
Clearly, the fundamentals of the P.A.C.E. program seem ill-suited to make substantial material change in women’s lives. In Haiti, more than 65% of garment workers are women under 30 whose wages support, on average, three to five family members, according to the ILO’s BetterWork program. The minimum wage for those workers is 685 Haitian gourdes, less than $5.25 day – some of the lowest in the hemisphere. It’s laughable to suggest that Haitian garment workers just need better financial literacy skills to make ends meet.

Through a series of surveys of program participants, the P.A.C.E. program was determined to have increased such vague factors as women’s “self-esteem,” and “self-efficacy” by dramatic percentages. The report concludes that P.A.C.E. participants are more efficient workers, measuring self-reported statistics to back the claims – including a rise in workers saying that they come to work on time (87% before program participation vs 96% after).

Gap’s RISE Program Fails at the Basics of Empowering Women

For International Women’s Day 2023, Gap relaunched the P.A.C.E. program as a new multi-stakeholder initiative called RISE: Reimagining Industry to Support Equality. The RISE program brings together several other corporate social responsibility initiatives: BSR’s HERproject, Gap Inc., P.A.C.E, CARE, and Better Work under one umbrella. The revamped program builds on the original P.A.C.E program’s trainings for factory workers and managers, and aims to engage brands and suppliers in transforming business practices to include gender equity and influence public policy, per its inaugural press release.

Gap’s Women’s Initiatives are Fundamentally Unfit to Protect Workers’ Rights

Fundamental rights aren’t optional. Teaching women how to open a bank account is pointless if brands don’t pay enough for workers to have money at the end of each month to put in savings. Teaching women communication skills that might help some to get a promotion to supervisory roles isn’t a substitute for protecting union rights and workers’ freedom of association. And talk of work-life balance with family commitments rings hollow while Gap allows its supplier to get away with illegally firing pregnant workers. 
While Gap has long leaned on the rhetoric of supporting women, the reality falls far short. The company’s women’s rights initiatives are fundamentally unequipped to protect workers’ rights. And in the intervening years, the scope of the program has shrunken, not grown. According to its own goals, Gap aimed for 100% of strategic factories to participate in the P.A.C.E/Rise program by 2025. While Gap does not publicly define what “strategic factories” means, it has not achieved even this reduced goal. As of March 2026, the participation rate is 85%.

Gap Has a Track Record of Gender-Based Violence and Abuse 

The illegal firings of pregnant workers and women union leaders at the Wilbes factory in Haiti is part of a larger pattern: Gap’s poor track record on working women’s rights. In 2018, a series of investigations revealed a pattern of gender-based violence and physical abuse driven by Gap’s purchasing practices. One of the case studies cited by the Guardian describes how, “In a factory supplying Gap in Indonesia, a woman talked about daily being called stupid, mocked for not working faster and threatened with contract termination. ‘They also throw materials. They kick our chairs. They don’t touch us, so they don’t leave a mark that could be used as evidence with the police,’ she said.” In 2025, Gap was named in reports published by Amnesty International for profiting “on the back of underpaid work of a largely women-driven workforce coerced into silence.” The reports showed Gap failing to engage on issues of wages, worker protections, and gender-based violence across suppliers in Southeast Asia.

Workers’ Demands for Remedy, Rehire are a First Step 

Across the globe, Gap Inc.’s promises paper over an ugly reality of low wages, gender-based violence and harassment at work. Yet Amnesty International’s report points to a clear solution that Gap can get behind: protect and defend workers’ right to freedom of association as a critical first step. Research has repeatedly shown that women are truly empowered to defend their rights and more likely to achieve financial stability when they are able to join a union. 

The firing of union leaders, as in the case of Gap’s Haitian supplier, undermines worker organizing, and, ultimately, disempowers working women. 

Gap currently has the opportunity to act and make its promises a reality. It’s high time that Gap ensures that the pregnant women and union leaders illegally fired from its Haitian supplier are offered their jobs back with all back compensation paid in full. These measures would be a first step towards Gap living up to its promises this International Women’s Day.