Back in Time for the Factory

1 Seasons

Season 1

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?