Female factory workers not only struggled with poor working conditions, but also often with a lack of support from their families due to the traditionally low status of women in Chinese society. This can be seen in the report the female Communist Yang Zhihua wrote on the results of a strike among female silk workers in 1926:
Those brave and ardent young women workers who energetically supported the strike want to extricate themselves from the bonds of the family and march forward. But in the end they have to go home. I heard that some who returned home after the strike were beaten and humiliated by parents, brothers and sisters-in-law. They were refused food. One family said: “You haven’t been back for several days. You must have a lover. For all we care, you can die.” The parents of another woman gave her a rope and knife and told her to choose. Poor women workers. They don’t sleep or eat well during the strike and then they have to go onto a tragic stage.
(From S. A. Smith: Like Cattle and Horse. Nationalism and Labor in Shanghai, 1895 –1927. Durham and London: Duke University Press, p. 231)