ABSTRACT
Women working in factories is not a new phenomenon. Following the Industrial Revolution of the early 1800s, young women worked in textile, garment, and cigar-making factories in the United States. By the mid 1800s, northern-European immigrant women displaced many U.S.-born women in the textile mills of New England {Amott and Matthaei 1991; Kessler-Harris 1982). Eastern-European women as well as Italian and Jewish women moved into the garment industry during the late 1800s. It was not until labor shortages during World War II that African-American women moved into factory jobs in large numbers. Today, 17.7 percent of all manufacturing jobs in the United States are held by women (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 1994).
