In the early 19th century Chinese immigrant came to the United States thinking that they would be making their fortunes and later return to China to live a wealthy life. The gold rush in California was the starting point of Chinese coming by the thousands to the United States. While a lot of Chinese were coming to the US many of them were males. Only a handful of Chinese women were in the US during the gold rush era, it wasn't till years later that more women starting coming to the US. Even though more Chinese women were coming to the US the economic and social lifestyle of the Chinese men and women were different. .
The Chinese men had worked many different type of industry during their stay in America. The early Chinese men that came to America worked as miners in California. When mining for gold was no longer profitable many of them left that industry to become employed by the railroad company. The Chinese was the primary source of labor for the railroad company because of their cheap wages and their dependability. After the completion for the transcontinental railroad, many of the Chinese labor moved to cities like San Francisco and started to work at factories. Others were able to start their own business and was the beginning of the Chinese laundry mat. For those that didn't move to the cities they found work in agriculture. The Chinese men's were a great source of labor in which ever industry they were in.
Unlike the Chinese men's the Chinese women were not in the same labor force as men's. In the early stage of the Chinese women immigrate most of them came with their husband which were merchants. The low number of women immigrate was due to the fact of Chinese culture and values of having a women traveling alone. With the lack of women in America, many women in China were tricked by giving them false promises of wealth or were sold by their families and some were even abducted.