Eighty percent of the employees on the assembly lines in coastal China are female, and the proportion across the manufacturing belt of East Asia is at least 70 percent. The economic explosion in Asia was, in large part, an outgrowth of the economic empowerment of women. “They have smaller fingers, so they’re better at stitching,” the manager of a purse factory explained to us. “They’re obedient and work harder than men,” said the head of a toy factory. “And we can pay them less.”
