Women Miners in the English Coal Pits

The theme of this reading is that of misuse. During the late 1700's and early 1800's many women and children were misused. This reading also told us that women and children were given the same jobs as men but that they just worked for a cheaper pay than men. I just feel that it is not right that they all were doing the same job because they weren't men they weren't treated as fairly. 

Several things that came to mind when i read this was that because this was that during the industrial revolution things like this occurred more often than not and this was because families had to find ways to earn more money. This was due to the fact that at that time families were not doing well financially. However, women and children usually only brought home less than 1/3 of the pay given to men. This kind of work was very common, but after several decades a law was put into place that banned children under 10 years and all women from working in the mines.

  

 After reading this i noticed it said, "In many of the collieries in this district, as far as relates to the underground employment, there is no distinction of sex, but the labour is distributed indifferently among both sexes.” I understand that women wanted to do a lot of the same things as men and gain more freedom and equal rights but I do think there needs to be a line somewhere too. Especially in the workplace because were not all built the same to be able to all be capable of doing the same jobs. Its kind of sad to think what these children and women had to go through to do the same work the men had to do yet get paid even less.

  

Reading this story makes me think about how grateful i am that there were laws put into place to protect children and women from having to do extreme work that the men could endure but children could not. Its awful to think of what they had to go through that they should not have. Children are precious to God and to have little girls working alongside grown men in full nudity and therefore vulnerable to sexual indiscretions must have really upset Him.

    

This reading relates to the tex because the book talks about the Industrial Revolution and the roles of men, women, and children during that time. The reading and the text both talk about how children younger than 13 years old made up a lot of the work force. They both talked about what the women and children faced and the trials and difficult times they endured. They also covered wages and the work environment and what was produced in certain industries.