Sweatshops: The Oppression Of Women

Sweatshops have been around for centuries, beginning around the late 1880’s. Sweatshops are classified by three main components, long work hours, very low pay and unsafe and unhealthy working environments. Sweatshops are usually found in manufacturing industries and the most highlighted production is clothing corporations, who take full advantage of the low production costs of their products. Many may think sweatshops are a thing of the past but they are still affecting many lives across the nations. There are many ways sweatshops affect lives, but a recent article titled “New study finds ‘more sweatshops than Starbucks’ in Chicago” explains that there are many low wage industry jobs that are violating labor laws in the United States alone. The article also reports how employees who are working in such conditions won’t speak up in fear of the retaliation employers will implement. Analyzing Sweatshops through the lens of the Sociological perspectives will help us better understand the illegal conditions of workplaces that still exist today.

1. Conflict theory suggests that inequality and the struggle over resources, different interests, and different values shape society. How does conflict theory help explain sweatshops and labor rights violations? The conflict theory helps to explain sweatshops and labor rights violations in more ways than one.

In his opinion essay, “Sweatshop Oppression,” published in the student newspaper, The Lantern, at Ohio State University, writer Rajeev Ravisankar uses his article as a platform to raise awareness about the deplorable conditions in sweatshops. Ravisankar awakens his readers from their slumber and brings to light the fact that they are partly responsible for the problem. His first goal in the essay is to designate college students as conscious consumers who look to purchase goods at the lowest prices. Then he makes the connection between this type of low-cost consumerism and the high human cost that workers are forced to pay in sweatshops. His second goal is to place the real burden of responsibility directly with the companies that perpetuate this system of exploitation. Finally, he proposes what can be done about it. By establishing a relationship that includes himself in the audience, working to assign responsibility to the reader, and keeping them emotionally invested, Ravisankar makes a powerful argument that eventually prompts his student reader to take responsibility for their actions and make a change.

Sweltering heat, long hours, and unfair working conditions are a few descriptive words that Americans use to describe a sweatshop. I believe our judgment is being misguided by the success of our nation, and it is imperative we redefine the word “sweatshop”. Individuals that endure life in third world countries know hardships that Americans could not imagine. If we were to recognize these economical differences it may shine a light on why these workers seek sweatshop jobs. In many of these cases, children must work to aid in the family’s survival. If these jobs are voluntary and both parties agree to work conditions, it results in a mutually beneficial arrangement. One of the worst things we can do as outsiders, to help these impoverished

A majority of the clothing worn and purchased today in the United States has been manufactured overseas in sweatshops. Since the beginning of factories and businesses, owners have always looked for a way to cut production costs while still managing to produce large quantities of their product. It was found that the best way to cut costs was to utilize cheap labor in factories known as sweatshops. According to the US General Account Office, sweatshops are defined as a “business that regularly violates both wage or child labor and safety or health laws”. These sweatshops exploit their workers in various ways: making them work long hours in dangerous working conditions for little to no pay. Personally, I believe that the come up and employment of these sweatshops is unethical, but through my research I plan to find out if these shops produce more positive than negatives by giving these people in need a job despite the rough conditions.

     As companies grow larger and more competitive, they are looking for cheaper ways to produce their wares and increase their profit. That is, after all, how companies are able to succeed, by giving their customers a comparable product for a cheaper price. This increases sales and the overall bottom line. Which seems to be a beneficial plan for both the companies and the consumers. That is, as long as the consumers don’t know how the product is being produced. The places that produce these products for an extremely cheap cost are called “Sweatshops”. A sweatshop is a small manufacturing establishment in which employees work long hours under substandard conditions for low wages. Sweatshops came about

Thesis statement: Sweatshops, when left to operate without government intervention, are the most efficient way of out poverty.

Thesis statement: Sweatshops, when left to operate without government intervention, are the most efficient way of out poverty.

Sweatshops are a major issue in the world relating to human rights breaches, greed, consumerism, feminism issues and environmental ethics.

Many companies and schools in the United States buy their products from factories that have their workers working in horrible conditions. "That is employing over 50,000 workers to work in these conditions" (Jensen, Davidson 279). They have the workers work from 5 A.M. until nighttime inhaling dangerous chemicals and working in temperatures that get as high as 130 degrees. These high temperatures cause heat stress, burns, and injuries to workers. Many of the factories that the United States buys from are in another countries. In these countries they have horrible working conditions. Working in these places called sweatshops should be banned. Sweatshops are "a shop or factory in which employees work long hours at low wages

Theodore Roosevelt took over as U.S. President at a time when the United States was in need of change. The issues I found most interesting in the videos are racism, rich industrialist rule of the country, construction of the Panama Canal, and the coal miners’ strike.

Each of the women portrayed, have a motive to stay true to themselves even if it means losing your job. From Kyung-Soon producing jeans in America and not outsourcing materials. To Maria actually being one of the women who is working in a sweatshop in El Salavador, being paid on a non-living wage, being forced to work to provide in harsh conditions. Also Gabby, who has always worn the best of the best and just recently found out that her clothes have been made in third-world countries where women are being made slaves to creating her clothing. It puts things in perspective, how and where are materials that we have, come from. It is clearly a problem that in a country like El Salvador, you're being worked to death for very little. We need to

Americans love to shop. With malls everywhere you go, shopping just might be America's favorite past time! When you are out shopping though, do you ever stop to think where all of those clothes and shoes come from? When I was younger, well, actually until recently, I always thought they were all made by machines. Shirt machines, pants machines…you get the picture. I have learned, however, that for the most part, clothes are still made on sewing machines, by people, and often under circumstances that we can only imagine.

Inexpensive clothing has been the major trend thanks to the cheap laboring in Asia. Though we take granted for inexpensive clothes, we know little about how those clothes are made. In the manufacturing process, sometimes people die in the working environments because of the companies’ neglects on maintaining buildings, providing equipment for better production and improving the working environment. Some factories use children because they can cut more wages. Manufacturing factories with low wage, long working hours and poor conditions that violate human rights are called sweatshops. Since sweatshops violate human rights, they are unethical. Knowing this fact, should companies stop laboring in developing countries? The answer is no. In short, sweatshops are necessity parts of supply chain that fulfill demands and job supplies. Nonetheless, because sweatshops play vital role on offering jobs and inexpensive fashion products, those companies should take responsibilities. Simultaneously, the local government should make strict regulations on child labor and severe working circumstances to protect the citizens and labor rights. We will examine how companies and governments can make improvements on sweatshops controversy with hypothetical analysis on two outcomes of ending and continuing sweatshops.

Garment sweatshops in the San Francisco area were packed to the rim with Asian immigrant women in the last few decades of the 20th century. Miriam Ching Louie starts off her journal with a primary source of Helen Wong speaking on how she followed all the other immigrant women to the garment shops and found work there. These garment shops had bad conditions with dust flying around and the immigrants working there usually worked very long hours with extremely low pay. The garment industry in the Bay Area is one of the largest industries and ninety percent of the workers are women with a majority of them being Chinese-speaking. They were usually paid by how much they could make and produce so when the industry became globalized and the manufacturing companies moved their companies to Third World countries to minimize production costs, the Asian immigrant sweatshops workers would either lose their job or agree to the extremely low wages the companies were paying the Third World countries to make their products. Louie even lists out facts collected from a survey which mostly concluded that the seamstresses often had low English proficiency and about 60% of them work more than six days a week. A big part of Louie’s journal is talking about the growth of AIWA (Asian Immigrant Women Advocates) that came about due to what the Asian immigrant women were facing in the garment sweatshops. Its objectives is to “focus on the needs of its constituency. Popular