Women Workers in the Industrial Revolution

Throughout history, there have been periods of time where drastic changes have occured and it has transformed human life. One of these many time periods would be the Industrial Revolution. This revolution consisted of exhausting labor and unfair treatment. These negatives not only affected those in England, but these ideas traveled to the complete opposite side of the world to Japan. Although England and Japan are on opposite sides of their continents and these revolutions occured at different time periods in life, they consist of many differences along with many similarities.

To begin, a majority of the workers working in both time periods mainly consisted of females. Documents 3 and 4 show a clear vision of how the female population overthrew the male population. Document 3 compares the percentage of female workers to male workers in five English towns in 1833. This document shows that in Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex the female percentage is 96% while the male percentage is just 4%, that is a 93% difference.

Along with these English towns another two towns are Somerset and Derbyshire. In Somerset, the female percentage is 80% while the male percentage 20% and in Derbyshire the female percentage is 63% while the male population is 37%. Document 4 compares the age of female and male workers working in 205 mills in Japan. This document shows that the gender percentage of males is 8% which is a total of 1,109 males while the female percentage is 92% which is a total of 12,519 females. Documents 3 and 4 compare the difference of female workers to male workers.

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To continue, along with the majority of workers being females, they got paid extremely low amounts for all the work they put in. Documents 7 and 8 represent clear differences in wages compared to males to females. Document 7 compares the average income of 119 families employed by Thomas Ashton, Hyde, England.

When working as a female loom operator being 21 years and older the daily wage was 26 pence, while male loom operators were paid 40 pence daily. 1 pound represents 20 shillings and 1 chilling represents 12 pence. With the low amount of income that females receive, they could only buy little to no food for their children. It is also written in document 7 that, "At the Hyde mill the proportion of adult males to women and children was about one to four".

This shows how unfair women were treated. Document 8 compares the average daily wages for several occupations for both math and female in Japan. Being a male cotton mill worker, the daily wage was 17 sen while for women it was 9. The other occupations were seasonal agricultural wage worker, carpenter, and silk factory worker.

While male seasonal agricultural wage workers got 16 sen, females received 9 sen. While carpenters which was an occupation primarily for male received 27 sen while silk factory workers which was primarily an occupation meant for females received 13 sen. Documents 7 and 8 show how unfairly females were paid compared to males.

To follow, on top of mainly female working difficult jobs and them not being paid equally, they were also treated terribly. Documents 5 and 10 clearly described how their day to day life is and how exhausting it is. Document 5 talks about a young girl named Ellen working in Wigan, England.

From the description given it is shown that Ellen is a nine-year-old girl that works for a total of 15 hours a day and only gets a half an hour break. And on Saturdays, she must work 9 more hours which totals in 86 hours per week. The working conditions for females in Okaya Japan were almost the exact same as those in Wigan England.

Female workers in Okaya worked fourteen to seventeen-hour shifts with only a thirty-minute break to eat both breakfast and lunch. They only had one day off every two weeks. Document 10 is a testimony given by a young girl describing what goes on during work hours.

Hannah Goode explains that young children get beaten up if they do not do their work correctly or if they fall asleep too early. Females receive no education and there are only two male workers working out of all the others. Documents 5 and 10 describe how horrible the day to day life the females had to go through every day.

It is evident that overall the women working during the Industrial Revolution had tougher lives than the men had. And both English and Japanese female workers faced similar obstacles when working. These dilemmas range from being treated unfairly which consisted of not getting any education and were constantly beaten.

Along with their wages being not nearly as similar to the amounts the men were receiving. In conclusion, it is shown that although England and Japan are very far apart from each other and these revolutions occured at different eras, they both were faced with similar experiences.

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