Better conditions for female garment workers can boost productivity while empowering the industry’s largely female workforce both inside and outside factory walls, a new World Bank Group study said.

The study titled ‘Interwoven: How the Better Work Programme Improves Job and Life Quality in the Apparel Sector’, assesses the impact of improvements under the Better Work programme – a partnership launched in 2001 by IFC, a member of the World Bank Group (WBG), and the International Labour Organization (ILO).

“The findings in this report are encouraging,” WBG senior director for jobs Nigel Twose said. “Here we have more evidence of just how and under what circumstances better working conditions can improve performance, reduce turnover, and contribute to a more robust, more sustainable bottom line.”

The garment industry provides a vital first step out of poverty for tens of millions of mostly female workers globally—and an alternative to low-skilled agriculture and service work. But it has long been associated with low wages, long hours, discrimination, abuse, and other conditions that put workers’ health and safety at risk.

“Women globally and particularly in developing and emerging economies need more good jobs. This is vital to tackling persistent gender gaps—a development imperative if we are to achieve our goals of ending extreme poverty and boosting shared growth,” WBG senior director for Gender Caren Grown said.