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Back in Time for the Factory
A group of modern women are going back in time to the 60s, 70s and 80s to work and live through three decades of British factory life and learn how an unsung army of female workers took on the fight for equality at work and at home. 50 years ago, Britain was a manufacturing powerhouse, with an astonishing 34% of the population working on a manufacturing production line. Factories mostly employed women - hundreds of thousands of them, who made clothes, telephones and televisions - an amazing array of household items that were sold all over the world. The factories were centred on areas of high unemployment like the south Wales valleys and by employing so many women and girls they were at the forefront of a change in British society. But the women who would drive that change were poorly paid, unfairly treated and denied basic rights. Now, a group of modern-day workers are going back to the shop floor to work in a classic British garment factory to travel through three decades of hard graft and social change to chart just how far women have come. From a mother and her daughters to a young feminist who is the first in her family to go to university, and from a pregnant mother of three to a teenager struggling to find work in the Welsh valleys - how will these 21st-century women adapt to a period of rampant sexism, huge gender pay gaps and tough working conditions?
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Episode 1
1968
The workers start their journey in 1968, when The Beatles and Tom Jones are topping the pop music charts, Harold Wilson of Britain's Labor Party is Prime Minister and big hair abounds. It is also the year that female strikers in Dagenham brought a Ford automobile factory to a standstill and the question of women's pay into the headlines. The workers' first task is to produce pink nylon slips - a staple of British women's wardrobes in an era when only 30% of houses had central heating. But to do that they need to master the sewing and overlock machines on the factory floor. While some are amateur seamstresses, others, like the 17-year-old school dropout In the group, have never even threaded a needle before. The reality of the production line is a rude awakening for many - long monotonous hours with short breaks and few distractions - a situation made worse for some of the women when they discover that it's legal to refuse to serve an unaccompanied woman in a public bar. But that is far less of a shock than the moment they open their pay envelopes and realize that most of them are being paid less than half the rate of the men on the factory floor.