Since 1970, New York City has become the largest Chinese settlement in the United States and New York's Chinatown has emerged as the largest production center for the women's garment industry in New York City, the city's most important manufacturing industry. Women constitute over 85% of the work force and over 70% of the adult female population of the Chinese community work in the Chinatown garment industry. This high rate of women's labor participation has not only revitalized the economy of the Chinese community, but also reshaped its culture in the post war era.; This project is a case study of the Chinese women garment workers in New York City. It covers the period from 1948, when the garment factories first made their appearance in Chinatown, to the present. Five major aspects of the lives of the women workers are discussed in this project: their lives in the factory, their positions in the family, their relations with the ILGWU, their political awakening through initiating the Chinese garment workers' strike in 1982, the largest labor strike in the history of New York's Chinatown, and a comparison of their experience and those of their counterparts in other ethnic groups in the same industry. By examining in depth the women workers' experience within the historical context both of the Chinese community and of the garment industry in New York City, this project explores the intricate intersections of multiple forces in shaping these women's lives and challenges the underrepresentation of Chinese women workers not only in the literature on working class women in the United States, but also in most literature on Chinese Americans.; This study is based primarily on original sources, including relevant materials in the archives of the ILGWU and its Local 23-25, major newspapers and publications of the Chinese community, oral interviews with women garment workers and old-timers in New York's Chinatown, as well as the author's personal observation and contact with the workers over the past six years.
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