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AP World History: Modern

2025 AP World DBQ (Set 2): Industrialization and women's opportunities, c. 1850–1950

The task (paraphrased)

Evaluate how much the spread of industrialization gave women new opportunities and/or challenges from circa 1850 to 1950.

Exact wording and all 7 documents: official College Board PDF

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The 7 documents

  1. Vera Karelina, Russian labor activist, memoir of organizing St. Petersburg factory workers in the 1890s, published 1926
  2. Ottoman postcard of women and girls at a silk factory in Bursa, 1902
  3. He-Yin Zhen, Chinese political activist, “What Women Should Know About Communism,” 1907
  4. Vladimir District governorate, Russian Empire, government survey report on rural occupations, 1912
  5. Toshio Takai, Japanese labor activist, memoir of the 1910s and 1920s, published 1980
  6. Johanna Cornelius, white South African labor activist, statement on her election as a garment union organizer, circa 1940
  7. Ellen Kuzwayo, Black South African educator and activist, autobiography describing Johannesburg's history, 1985

To earn both document points, use at least 4 of these to support your argument - not just summarize them.

Contextualization ideas

  • Industrialization began in Britain and spread in the nineteenth century to Western Europe, the United States, Russia and Japan.
  • Ideas of separate spheres held that a respectable woman's place was the home, even as poor women had always worked.

Describe one of these in 2-3 sentences and connect it to the prompt - a passing mention won't earn the point.

Evidence beyond the documents

  • Meiji Japan's state-founded Tomioka Silk Mill (1872), staffed largely by young women
  • The Bolshevik Zhenotdel (women's department) after the 1917 revolution
  • Britain's Factory Acts limiting women's and children's working hours
  • Women's suffrage won in many industrial states after the First World War

Pick one, explain it specifically, and use it to support your argument.

A sample defensible thesis

From 1850 to 1950 industrialization brought women both new opportunities - wage income, urban independence and a base for labor and political organizing - and new challenges, including dangerous work, low pay and a double burden of factory and household labor.

Written by us as an example of the structure that earns the point (a claim plus a line of reasoning) - write your own.

Sourcing (HIPP) example

Takai's memoir was published in 1980, decades after the events, by a labor activist - her purpose of documenting exploitation helps explain the focus on harsh conditions and may underplay the wages and independence factory work also offered.

Do this for at least 2 documents to earn the sourcing point.

A route to the complexity point

Compare women's experience of industrial work in different regions (Russia, Japan, the Ottoman Empire, South Africa), or explain how race and class shaped whether factory work meant opportunity or exploitation.

More AP World DBQs

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The 7-point DBQ rubric, explainedAP World History: Modern DBQ grader

The question and documents are published by the College Board. The task above is our paraphrase; the coaching notes are DBQGrader's own. DBQGrader is not affiliated with or endorsed by the College Board.