I was very surprised while reading this chapter.  I have heard of many of these facts and figures before, but reading them all within this chapter really changed my view of the immigration into the United States and especially New York City.  The idea that girls were forced into working for their families while their brothers were able to get an education and ‘roam the streets’ is one hundred percent unfair.  Gender inequality is something I think should be mended and changed all throughout the world.  Women and men are meant to be equals, they may be built differently, however women have the same intellectual abilities as men that should not have kept the in factories and helping caring for the children at home instead of getting an education.  The girls in these families would sit in a factory, hours on end and come home and hand their paycheck directly to their mothers, in order to help support the family.  What really surprised me was in the case of one of the girls, where she was the main financial supporter of the family, because her mother stayed home to care for the younger children and her father worked irregularly.  Girls worked hard in coming to this country, and were not treated fairly, as seen with tragedies such as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.

Women were not even treated fairly at home, when they had to stay as their brothers went to school.  The anecdotes of the some immigrant women throughout the reading was shocking as well.  The fact that women took lower pay so that their husbands would not have a low ego and lose his superiority complex enrages me.  ‘If I went to Korea, he would starve to death,’ clearly shows how is stronger in the marriage, yet women had, and in most cases, still have less power than men.