Preview

Female Mill Workers in England and Japan: How Similar Were Their Experiences?

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
533 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Female Mill Workers in England and Japan: How Similar Were Their Experiences?
Female mill workers in England and Japan: How similar were their experiences?

Nikita Thompson B period 10/6/11 If a person who thinks they have it tough with their job takes a look at the fact that a young Japanese or British girl worked longer hours, got paid less, and put up with horrendous working conditions, that person might reconsider their statement. Despite the fact that Japan and England had many similarities with female mill workers, they still had a few differences. Young children and women worked in big dangerous factories known as mills, spent more hours then the average working person today, making thread or fixing machines. So how were their experiences different? Female Japanese workers had to work more, got paid less, and accepted the role that their society gave them. Compared to English women mill workers, Japanese women worked more. English female workers only worked about 74 hours a week and Japanese female workers worked 91 hours a week (Document 5). This was because the Japanese workers worked longer each day, had fewer holidays, and worked on weekends (Document 5). English female workers had more breaks, worked shorter hours each day, and did not work on weekends. This is a big difference between female English and Japanese mill workers. Even though in both England and Japan women got paid less than men, Japanese women got paid even less than English women. This is why they had so many workers (document 4). Since Japan paid the female mill workers less, they would be able to hire more workers and increase their production rate. Why would they want to pay women less? They paid women less because the women needed money and they would accept any amount given to them (Document 8). Japan and England had different ways they treated women and because of that the Japanese women accepted almost everything they went through in the mills. In Japan the women were

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Workers were more satisfied with how they were treated in Japan while Russia dealt with strikes because of poor working conditions. In document 4, S. I. Somov, a Russian socialist, recalls his participation in a strike. Being a socialist, it is easy to comprehend why Somov would sympathize with the workers and strike and even join them. He describes how the workers stated various phrases over and over again. The workers were on strike because they ran out of patience, and that their suffering was worse than death. These factory workers must have been treated extremely poorly for them to go on strike. In document 5, Yamamoto Shigemi, a historian, interviews elderly Japanese women who worked in silk factories. In Shigemi's survey, most workers voted favorably when asked about their food or pay and not a single one regretted going to work in a silk factory. A survey pool of 580 is enough to justify the notion that these conditions were similar throughout multiple factories in Japan, and that most factory workers were conent in how they were treated at the time. In document 7, M. I. Pokzocskaya, a Russian physicion, published an article about the treatment of womem in Russian factories. Women were required to work extremely long hours, up to 18 on some days. Actual physical force was also used to make children continue working. Women factory workers were treated as if they…

    • 701 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Equal Rights Amendment

    • 2124 Words
    • 9 Pages

    Before entering World War II, several companies in the United States were under contract to help with making equipment for the Allies. The United States entered the war very quickly. Production had to increase drastically to be able to produce enough equipment. New factories and work places were built to accommodate these drastic changes in production (Anderson). As a result, these new work places needed workers. At first, the companies did not think to hire women because they did not think there would be as big a shortage in male workers as there was. This, however, was not the case. Women workers were desperately needed by the companies. The companies needed such large numbers of workers…

    • 2124 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    In fact, equal opportunity for women came over twenty years after the United States introduced it (Strober and Chan 1999: 3). Since 1960, the number of employed women in Japan has increased. Women seeking employment were often not welcome in the workplace. If they did get hired for a job, they received much less on-the-job training due to the fact that they were expected to leave their jobs once they got married or had children (Strober and Chan 1999: 8). For this reason, women in Japan occupy the clerical positions in big companies, and are referred to as Office Ladies. There is not much training that is needed for these jobs, therefore not much is lost in the eyes of the company if a woman decides to leave. By 1995, over twenty million women were employed in the workforce (Ogasawara 1998: 17,…

    • 1229 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Help wanted! Long hours! Low pay! Unfair labor contracts! How could you turn us down? This might seem crazy but many people wouldn’t turn them down. They needed work and a paycheck. Even though the workers paid very little money and had long hours they still worked because once you’re in it’s hard to get out. So, did the cost outweigh the benefits for female Japan silk workers? The cost outweighed the benefits for three reasons: long, hard hours, low and unfair pay, and finally, unfair labor contracts.…

    • 473 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Female Mill Workers Dbq

    • 526 Words
    • 3 Pages

    With the dawn of industrialization Production’s most valuable resource was not raw materials, but time. The steam engine allowed vast amounts of goods to be created cheaply, and so it was ultimately decided by the workers how much was produced; rather than their work being limited by their materials it was limited by their speed. And so, efficiency, that is producing as much as possible as fast as possible, became the factory owner’s first priority. Because of their need for labor they employed females on a scale unlike any other time in history. Two examples, England and Japan, show the universal dilemmas of this mentality. Low wages for maximum profit, long working hours, and the harsh nature of the work, was common for both societies. Despite being practically hemisphere apart, both groups of women were subjugated to unfair practices as greed transcends borders. Despite working the same job for the same period of time, women were paid substantially less than men, and even men were paid very little. However, as industrial life replaced rural life families became smaller and less money had to be dedicated to food. Under this system families and women had a substantially better relationship with their boss then they would have had under their feudalistic past where what little income they had was directed back towards the lord. Compared to the iconic “9 to 5” most Americans have come to know, the working hours of women in both England and Japan were severe; in fact, a more appropriate approximation would be “5 to 9”, as days would start early and end far later. However, this did not seem to bother both groups of females as it was not so much the longevity of their work as it was their lack of adequate pay. During the long work shift in the textile industry women made up the large majority in both English factories (anywhere from63% to 96%) and Japanese factories (92%) and seeing a man was rare. Because…

    • 526 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Women made up 49.83% of the nation’s 132 million jobs in June of 2009; for the first time in American history, “Women are on the verge of outnumbering men in the workforce for the first time, a historic reversal caused by long-term changes in women's roles and massive job losses for men during this recession” (Cauchon). Just as the current recession has impacted the way that women exist in the workforce, so too did past national events influence women’s roles in the workplace. In the early twentieth century, it was rare for women to work outside of the home; World War II, with its incredibly high draft rate, left a labor gap in the United States that made it necessary for women to enter the workforce in record numbers. Although many women were discriminated against in various industries, especially women of non-white ethnic and racial backgrounds, the changes that occurred in the 1940s laid the groundwork for allowing women to become a vital part of the workforce.…

    • 1799 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Most working women and children were no longer able to keep up with the speed and efficiency of the competing textile machines. In order to provide a needed extra income to help support their families they were forced to work in cottage industries, making pins or buttons, or even finding work in the mines, dragging the mined coal from the men all the way to the storage units. The women did all of this while looking after their children and even using opium to keep their babies quiet during work hours. Yet after all of the struggles that women and children faced, there was still an undeniable discrimination of gender and age in the workplace and the salaries of men compared to women is a prime example of…

    • 1524 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Women were utterly exploited in their workplace. They were often given the lowest skilled jobs with the lowest pay. Workdays reached over ten hours long with few breaks to eat. Not only did these women devote all of their energy to their manual labor, but their bosses and husbands bullied them. At work, bosses threatened to fire or beat women, often carrying around a whip. Many purposefully messed with the machinery, and women were even sexually harassed. After a draining day at work, females entered their second job. Not only were they expected to equally provide for the family, but they were in charge of home life. They cooked, cleaned, and endured more disrespect from their husbands. Without rights, they were not even valued by the public, which caused many psychological issues for the women. These long days and mental struggles made life even harder for the youth who had to support their families, instead of the other way…

    • 1941 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    A Place For Women DBQ

    • 514 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Women’s roles in the workplace were also changing. Their slow shift from the house to factories was drastic and resulted in the women’s place being more prominent in society. Women worked hard, as can be seen in Document B, a letter from a Lowell mill girl. She describes her fourteen hour day shifts as better than what girls could expect. A woman’s wages were usually only half of a man’s and her work were almost intolerable, but they were earning their own money for the first time.…

    • 514 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Cotton Industry Dbq Essay

    • 668 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Poor conditions and low pay developed for workers in both countries, especially in japan. Girls were forced to work late in confined space and pay was sparse, on top of that sickness was common and some died from diseases spread in the factories (doc.3). However despite low pay, factory jobs were important for many lower class or farmer families. Many would send their children to work in the factories to provide extra income to their family (doc.4). Also factory jobs provided an escape from those same lower class strata’s for the girls who went to work as they became responsible for themselves and weren’t held back forced to provide for an entire family (doc. 5). This same effect was true in India where the vast majority of workers were recruited from small rural farming villages (doc.9). These similarities are clearly defined as inherent aspects of industrialization in a non-industrialized…

    • 668 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Lowell Mills

    • 654 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Next, the conditions in which the women worked and lived in were terrible. The average women would work 73 hours a week. “Between 1843 and 1848 they mounted petitions campaigns aimed at reducing the hours of labor in the mills” (Dublin 265). Their petitions had no effect on management…

    • 654 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    From document 5 one can see that female workers in England worked around seventy four hours a day. With a break for breakfast and dinner, and did not work on Sundays. One can also see that Japanese female workers worked much more than those in England. They worked ninety one hours with short breaks and no weekends. Sometimes even longer depending on how busy the factory was. This document shows that female mill workers in England worked much less than those in Japan. From document 6, one can see that the men that are working in these mills in England are making much more than the female workers. The point of view from document 6 is that men are making more money than women. Document 7 shows that the women in England are making one third less than what men are making. Document 8 shows that female mill workers in Japan are making less than half of what the men are making. Document 7 and 8 both show that the point of view is that female mill workers are making better wages than the Japanese workers. Document 9 shows what the Female mill workers could buy in England with their wages compared to those in Japan. The amount of food a Female mill worker in England makes is substantially higher than that in Japan. A female mill worker in England can buy 24 servings of oats in an hour, compared to Japanese mill workers who can only buy ten servings of rice an hour. Showing that Female…

    • 917 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The book Hiroshima by John Hersey describes the life of people after the dropping of the bomb and the different roles they had to fulfill after the bomb in order to survive. The women in the book are forced to do several tasks that were normally male dominated in order to bring home enough money to feed their families. One woman that demonstrates this is is Nakamura-San, who works in a chemical shop wrapping mothballs. This task was difficult for her and all the other workers because “Paragen had a dizzying odor, and at first it made one’s eyes smart” which added to her already difficult situation of being an atomic bomb victim (Hersey 96). Although she often got sick from work, she had no other option other than to work a difficult job as…

    • 173 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    First is open-minded. Although Japan has been influenced a lot by western culture, most people still stick to the conservative concept-female should stay at home, not go outside to work. In 2007, Japan's GEM(United Nations Development Program's Gender Empowerment Measure, which gauges equality by tracking woman's participation in politics and business) was ranked 54th out of 93 countries. Japanese should be open-minded and encourage female to work. If female work, their talent and education can be best made use of. What is more, since males and females are complementary in many aspects, their cooperations with males can propel economic development more effectively.…

    • 486 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    5.2.4 Businesswoman

    • 1235 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The door for a woman in the business world might have been opened, but it was difficult for her to demonstrate her worth. A woman was required to take the same education as a man, even though they ended with the same grades, a woman’s university degree counted as almost nothing, the degree did not have value for the Japanese companies, and they continued to only hire men for higher positions. The change of this came with the foreign companies. They noticed numerous of benefits by hiring the overqualified Japanese women; they were able to save money by hiring women, compared to men. The women then began to rise in the business world, and slowly they began to overtake several of the positions previously only taken by men (Murphy,…

    • 1235 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays