At a time when concern with the exploitation of young women in the assembly plants of developing countries is still a major social issue for gender and development specialists, Discovering Women's Voices. The Lives of Modern Japanese Silk Mill Workers in Their Own Words, offers a vivid account of the lives of women who formed modern Japan’s ‘reserve army’ for textile mills.

By analyzing works songs and oral testimonies of former silk-reeling operatives about their lives in the factory and in their native countryside, it challenges the long-standing assumption describing their history as merely exploitative, convincingly showing that factory life could appear as a window of opportunity or at least a lesser evil to workers born in rural underprivileged families.