Summary: Sweatshop Workers

Along with the distance, families were separated by long working hours. “[Before] dawn my labor drives me forth tis night when I am free…” (Document 2) Besides children, factories also liked women workers because they were cheaper than men and were afraid to complain. Women worked 12-16 hours a day and six days a week. “A stranger am I to my child; and he one to me.”

Then a 1920s photo of a Japanese cotton mill is displayed in document 8, which reveals that there were mostly women employees working in that particular factory. These three documents similarly show there was a leading importance of women to Japan’s mechanized cotton industry as well as a employment of children in factories. This greatly contrast to India, which can be seen in document 7 as it reveals that during this time period while Japan had 80.6% of female employment, India only had 18.9 %. Furthermore, the contrast can be seen visually by comparing the images from Document 8 and document 10, in which document 8 shows females as being dominant in factory employment, in

If a worker whined about their low wage or the long hours spent working they would be fired, and the owners would hire a new worker. Most of the time the workers didn’t get any time off for breaks or even going to the bathrooms. It wasn’t just young women who had to work in the harsh factory conditions. Children also worked in the factory because their families need

These young women,many being immigrants, worked six or seven days a week for wages of approximately $5, crammed into dark spaces with little ventilation . This factory like so many others was owned and run by men who were more interested in males working in the higher-paid jobs, while assuming women were less skilled and less willing to fight for equality. “The shops are unsanitary - that's the word that is generally used, but there ought to be a worse one used. Whenever we tear or damage any of the goods we sew on, or whenever it is found damaged after we are through with it, whether we have done it or not, we are charged for the piece and sometimes for a whole yard of the material. ”(7).

The age range of the women workers were from age fifteen to age twenty-four and very few male workers worked in this factory. The reasoning for these women workers to work long, hard hours helped them by “sending brothers to high school, to art school, to dental college, to engineering courses” (p. 96). Most of the work was as simple as “cutting threads, which can be done by an unpracticed girl of fourteen” (p. 44). Despite the harsh conditions of this factory, they only paid their workers six dollars a week and extra money could be made if they worked the whole week. These workers would hunch over hefty and risky sewing machines that only worked by foot pedaling.

In The New Latino Studies Reader: A Twenty-First-Century Perspective by Ramon A. Gutierrez and Tomas Almaguer, chapters “Gender Strategies, Settlement, and Transnational Lives” and “She’s Old School Like That” talk about the gender issues first and second generation Latinas faced. In the first generation, Robert Smith articulates how gender structures impact the lives of men in women. Whereas in the second generation, Lorena Garcia communicates how mother and daughter relationships worked during that time period and how sexual behavior played a big role in their relationships.

The women would had experienced anything from sexual harassment, rubbed up against or felt on, to being locked into a room until they had finished their shift . Often the bosses would refer to the young preteen or teenage girls as the “working girls” . The working conditions of the women and young children could only be described as slave conditions, one worker described her experience while working for the Triangle Waist Company, “[w]e were like slaves,’ complained one women. ‘You couldn’t pick your head up. You couldn’t talk.

In her book, Factory Girls: Women in the Thread Mills of Meiji Japan, E. Patricia Tsurumi details the working conditions of women employed in the textile factories of Japan during the Meiji Era of Japanese history. Tsurumi attempts to give an inclusive description of the women’s struggles, detailing the reasons for which women worked in the industry, as well as the working conditions they faced. Tsurumi begins her text by describing the importance of the women’s work to the nation of Japan, and ends it by discussing the sacrifices many women made for the good of their country, effectively painting them as heros. However, she spends the vast majority of her text detailing the poor working and living conditions faced by the women working in the

Document 4 is from a Buddhist priest from a rural area of Japan from which many farm girls were sent to work in the mills around 1900. The priest discusses how the peasants in the rural area were poor and had little to eat, and that girls who went to work in the factories were the peasants’ only salvation because of the wages they received. This further emphasizes that the majority of women during this time were factory workers. Document 7 is a table based on data from a dissertation called “Industrialization and the Status of Women in Japan,” written in 1973. According to this table, from 1909 to 1934 there was a slight decrease in the percentage of female cotton textile laborers in India, and only around one-fifth of all women worked in cotton textile factories.

The article written by Yen Le Espiritu called “We Don 't Sleep Around Like White Girls Do”: Family, Culture, and Gender in Filipina American Lives is written from a feminist political economy approach. As I have learned through my sociological experience and from the class women, work and family a feminist political economy approach adds a gender lens to explore women’s access to resources in the public and private spheres. It looks at the inequalities of power and control. Looking through the lived experiences of women where gender inequality can be identified through patriarchy. Patriarchy connects with race and class to further oppress and marginalize racialized women.

The women worked 13 hour days in the summer, and from 5 a.m. until dark in the winter. Each room had from sixty to ninety women working, with a couple men managing their every move. The noise inside of the factories was extremely loud and unbearable. Although, the factories become very warm at times, the windows were kept shut to keep thread work precise and away from the blowing wind. The atmosphere was filled with dust and cotton filaments, which a very dangerous to one's lungs.

In her book, From Out of the Shadows, Viki L. Ruiz argues the contributions to history that was made by farm workers, activists, leaders, volunteers, feminists, flappers, and Mexican women. She explores the lives of the innovative and brave immigrant women, their goals and choices they make, and how they helped develop the Latino American community. While their stories were kept in the shadows, Ruiz used documented investigations and interviews to expose the accounts of these ‘invisible’ women, the communities they created, and the struggles they faced in hostile environments. The narrative and heartfelt approach used by Ruiz give the reader the evidence to understand as well as the details to identify or empathize with.

Differences in Expectations an Argumentative Analysis of Aurora Guerrero’s film Mosquita y Mari In Aurora Guerrero’s film Mosquita y Mari discusses the lives of two high school classmates Mari and Yolanda who are growing up in Huntington Park a predominantly Mexican neighborhood in Los Angeles California. In this film characters Mari and Yolanda have contrasting backgrounds. Because Mari’s upbringing contrasts with Yolanda’s it allows for the viewer to question both sides of the immigrant experience and furthermore examine what that contrast can mean for the maturing women.

This goes along with the gender inequality within the household. They brought that attitude into the workforce which helped transition the gender hierarchy that existed in the household, into the factories and other production facilities. Ideas of women’s placement in society were underpinned by legal, political, and social practices which subordinated women. They were seen as less important. One circumstance that made women seem less powerful was how poorly they were paid compared to men.

It will further elaborate on the ongoing debate about what role laws and regulations should take on the growing issue of sweatshops and child labor, and how they can be improved on without disabling the poverty-stricken foreign workers, who may rely on this type of work to support their families. The proceeding essay will take on the cause and effects as well as a few pros and cons of sweatshops in the United States regarding the beginning of sweatshops and the effects on people involved. A few of the main ideas will include contributors that began sweatshops and how it has evolved, why laws and regulations were implemented and if they’re making a difference or not, as well as the pros and cons that come along with the