Women routinely face sexual assault and exploitation in factories, many of which supply western brands. A grassroots movement is helping victims to seek justice

Dolly Akhtar was only 16 when she started work in a garment factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, stitching clothing destined for shop floors in western countries thousands of miles away. She accepted the long hours and low pay, but what she wasn’t expecting was the sexual advances of her older, married line manager.

“When the line manager at the very first factory I worked at tried to get me to sleep with him, I was terrified,” she says. She left her job and found another but encountered similar problems there. “At the other factory, the management would curse and hit us. The men leered at us,” she says.