Women mills in Japan and England.The experiences of female mill workers in Japan had different experiences from female mill workers in England. The industrial revolution happened in England around the 1800’s while in Japan, the industrial revolution happened around the 1900’s.Just imagine overworked laborers that operated the machinery that made things run. In the textile industry, women and young girls were the main employees.
The main reason for this is that nimble fingers were needed to tend the spinning and weaving machines. Originally spinning and weaving were done at home or small spin shops but the Industrial revolution changed that by bringing house spinning and weaving to factories. With the mass production of textiles, women were given a chance to actually work for wage. This seemed like a grand opportunity but this work experience was difficult for these women. The experiences of the Japanese and English female workers were in fact similar. Both of which had to deal with long working hours with little pay, sexual and physical abuse from male supervisors, and hardship with their families over their occupation. The work day for both these nationalities consisted of the same unreasonableness and unfairness.
In England , women had horrendous working hours. On weekdays work in a factory work begin at 5:30 am and finish at 8 pm which is a total of 14 hours and 30 minutes. Then in Japan, a work day would start at 4:05 am until 7:30 pm, for a total of 14 hours and 20 minutes. Also to add on to the burden of being exhausted, women were treated unequally when it came to wages. For example , a female worker in England questions her wage when she notices that her youngest child makes more than her. She makes a total of 2 shillings a week while her child makes 2 shillings and 6 pence.
This inequality also affects the working women of Japan. But if one would complain or do any act then they would get beat up.In England, according to the document, if the girl in the article worked a seven day week from 5:30AM to 8:00PM for a 14.5 hour shift. That totals to 101.5 hours a week.
In Japan it is a different story. The working conditions are still bad, yet they work longer hours with no concept of a weekend, which is a western idea. On average a female mill worker would work from 4:30 AM till 10:00PM. That is a 17.5 hour shift and a total of 122.
5 hours for a seven day week. Compared to the English woman’s 14.5 hour shift and 101.
5 work week, the Japanese women work much longer hours under the harsh working conditions and they are much younger than the women in England. In this quote “We complain of nothing but short wages.” shows an article about a family of six and their hardships while working at the factories.
While the husband earns 12 shillings, the mother only earns 2 shillings, which is a sixth of the husbands pay, even though they work the same hours and do the same work. Her family earns a total of 24 shillings and sixpence; from this they must pay the rent, fuel, clothes, and food. The point of view of this is that women only earn half the amount that men do, even though they do the same work; and if everyone in the woman’s family does not work then they will not be able to survive.Some similarities that i noticed is that both had breaks but mostly for lunch and dinner.The majority of the age group for women and children are the same. Which for women was 15 to 25 years old and for children from 5-12.The industrial revolution process began in the period 1760 to 1820 which spread to many countries after wards and one of them was japan from england.
Although Japan wasn’t the same because , japan feared the west or europe and the united states.Especially since they are more powerful and could take over easily since they had new things which made things easier.Both rose to become the two great pioneers of the modern world, however the paths they took to success were different. The economic outcome of both countries became rich and powerful.The most important thing which increased the economic in Britain was the growth of wool allowed by coal. Britain had large domestic deposits of coal for steam power; large domestic deposits of iron for building machinery while japan had to import theirs cause they did not have it which was something making their life tougher .
They imported machineries unlike britain they had more technology Simply the wages were very low that workers could not feed their family after all the hard effort they put into work. They were not happy with this result but could not say anything or else would get harmed and the workers were afraid of their bosses.But overall this was such a good thing to the industrial revolution that they didnt stop.Although technology did become better so now not all women have to suffer like this in mills.
