Part II Reflection

1) What does the history of the location of the textile industry illustrate about global economics?

• Global economies prefers a place with the cheapest labor, lowest restrictions, and greatest production, like China, for example.
• The textile industry informs about gender equalities between the sexes, where women were preferred to men because they had the skills to do so.
• China has the greatest population where people are available and desperate to work.

2) Industrialization brings both positive and negative consequences. How do you view these trade-offs. Use specific examples from the text to support your view.

• "Cotton textiles led the industrialization of a region" (pg.100) - Japanese female workers worked 12-hour days and two day off per month and lived in boarding houses. (crowded)
• BMW manufacturing facility - they lost the race to the bottom but those countries became the most advanced economies in the world today.

3) Choose one passage from this section of book that you found particular informative. Explain why it was interesting.

• The quote that I thought the most interesting the book was "women's labor was cheaper than men's, women more easily induced to undergo severe bodily fatigue"(pg.95, The Long Race to the Bottom) because it distinguishes gender differences of work that had to be completed within a period of time. This was due because women and children were less likely to cause trouble and were productive than that of men.
• Gender equality at the time was very different because women were paid less than men because men worked more hours outside of the home. The men worked in the public sphere whilst the women worked in the private sphere where they were not allowed to work outside of the home. They were preferably worked inside the home, taking care of children and their family. This separated the lives of the women and the men, focusing on different aspects in job opportunities.