Seventy years after the Bread and Roses strike, twenty thousand members of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) in New York Chinatown participated in a strike in 1982 to fight for the similar wage increases and workplace improvements that had been achieved in 1912. The 1965 Immigration Act ended the period of strict immigration policies and initiated a mass influx of immigrants from Eastern countries into the United States. These immigrants could generally be divided into two main socioeconomic classes: the poor and the elites. A majority of the poor immigrants were Chinese females who were compelled into working low-paying jobs, such as those in garment factories. With globalization beginning in the 1960s, the availability
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The institutionalized gender formations from the late nineteenth century still governed the separation of occupations in terms of gender. For example, in the court case Bradwell v. Illinois, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized the exclusion of women from the judicial sphere with the argument that “the natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many of the occupations in civil life” (20). This case reinforced the dominant ideology that women were by nature less competent than men and justified women’s inability to execute the duties of leadership positions. In the 1980s, men continued to be the owners, supervisors, and leaders of corporations where women were only allowed to fulfill subordinate positions. At the same time, the existence of white supremacy further subdivided women’s occupations into race-based sectors. Non-white women were unable to participate in the higher-paying occupational spheres of white women because women of color had additional circumstances that made them “less qualified.” Quan writes, “not able to speak English, but forced to work because they were poor, the newly arrived women had few options but to work in garment factories” (100). Class differences further reduced the number of jobs and the choice of jobs available to poor, immigrant women. Overall, the intersectionality of race, class, and gender created a socioeconomic glass ceiling that prevented women from changing the power imbalance and demanding rights in the work field. The strike served as a tool to shatter the glass ceiling and reorganize the power dynamics of the
The institutionalized gender formations from the late nineteenth century still governed the separation of occupations in terms of gender. For example, in the court case Bradwell v. Illinois, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized the exclusion of women from the judicial sphere with the argument that “the natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many of the occupations in civil life” (20). This case reinforced the dominant ideology that women were by nature less competent than men and justified women’s inability to execute the duties of leadership positions. In the 1980s, men continued to be the owners, supervisors, and leaders of corporations where women were only allowed to fulfill subordinate positions. At the same time, the existence of white supremacy further subdivided women’s occupations into race-based sectors. Non-white women were unable to participate in the higher-paying occupational spheres of white women because women of color had additional circumstances that made them “less qualified.” Quan writes, “not able to speak English, but forced to work because they were poor, the newly arrived women had few options but to work in garment factories” (100). Class differences further reduced the number of jobs and the choice of jobs available to poor, immigrant women. Overall, the intersectionality of race, class, and gender created a socioeconomic glass ceiling that prevented women from changing the power imbalance and demanding rights in the work field. The strike served as a tool to shatter the glass ceiling and reorganize the power dynamics of the