RT Aditya Kalra
Delighted to share that @Reuters has won India’s most prestigious journalism honour — the Ramnath Goenka Award — for business reporting for the investigation that revealed how Apple supplier Foxconn rejected married women from India iPhone assembly jobs because they had more family responsibilities than unmarried women.
The story had immediate and lasting impact. Modi's government called for an investigation within hours of the story being published, and the women's wing of Modi's party, India's human rights agency and opposition parties all reacted to it. The story became a major talking point on TV news and talk shows, as well as in newspaper editorials. Indian labour officials visited the Foxconn factory as part of the probe. Foxconn changed its policy: the company quietly tweaked its hiring protocols. It ordered its hiring agents who helped recruit iPhone assembly workers to remove age, gender and marital criteria from job ads.
For some Indian women, a job building iPhones is a ticket out of poverty. Between January 2023 and May 2024, Reuters made more than 20 trips to Sriperumbudur. We also reviewed a candidate information pamphlet, dozens of job ads and records of WhatsApp discussions in which four of Foxconn’s third-party recruiters stated to prospective candidates that only unmarried women were eligible for assembly jobs. 🙏
It was an important story. Apple is positioning India as an alternative manufacturing base to China. India PM Modi sees Foxconn’s iPhone factory and Apple’s broader supply chain as helping the world’s most populous country move up the economic value chain.
With @PraveenR_P, @MunsifV. Special thanks to our editor for the project, David Crawshaw. @ReutersPR
