In “Sewing Women”, chapters 1-4 focused on the differences in the hiring practices of Chinese and Korean factories, while 5-9 focused on the layout of the factories. For example, the Chinese were paid according to how many garments they made and were able to finish. The workers often worked with their families and people who spoke Chinese. However, in the Korean factories, it was more of an assembly line in which one garment was worked on by a few people. The Korean factories also hired more Mexican people and Ecuadorian and this often prevented people from socializing with one another. Korean factory owners also discrimated against those workers of African decent, as well as Puerto Rican because of a notion that they were lazy as opposed to Mexicans.

 
The working conditions in both factories was less than satisfying, but for some reason it seemed that the conditions in the Chinese factories were somewhat better than those in the Korean factories. The Korean factories seem more stressful and strenuous than the more lenient work done in the Chinese factories. However, even though conditions were better, this prevented some of the women from asking for higher pay. The fact that each worker worked on a single garment at a time also allowed for much error and made it obvious where the error stemmed from.