The first fifty women on the floor

A dyeing unit went from four women across three shifts to fifty-one in two years. Nothing about the machines changed.

01 · BEFORE, THERE WERE FOUR

Before, there were four

In January 2024 the dyeing unit had four women across three shifts. Two years later there are fifty-one.

They kept asking me why I wanted the night shift. Nobody asked the men.

03 · THE BUS WAS THE WHOLE ANSWER

The bus was the whole answer

Attrition in the first ninety days fell from thirty-one per cent to nine. The intervention was a bus that left the gate eleven minutes after the shift ended.

More stories of change

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Drawn from the floorThree units where the women would talk and would not be photographed. The story is drawn instead: composite people, checked facts.

What the supervisor sawA first-line manager on the six months after his line went from all-male to a third women, written in his own words.

What changed when the shift ended at nineMoving the shift forward cost the plant eleven minutes of line time a day. It kept nineteen of the twenty-three women who had given notice.