To form, moralize and discipline: Daily relationship between employers and workers in Minas Gerais State textile factories

Abstract

Th is paper aims to discuss the insertion of women in textile factories in the turn of late nineteenth to twentieth century and its relation to the social representation about women held in the period. Thus, it analyzes the written and received correspondence by the owners of the Cedro & Cachoeira Spinning Factory Co. The article highlights that women’s work in textile factories was accompanied by a moralizing and disciplining educational process, which sought to educate and form workers into a model of idealized femininity: hard-working, orderly, disciplined, clean, industrious, virtuous, obedient, modest, well behaved and God-fearing, very close to the virtues of a good devoted and obedient mother and housewife. In conclusion, it finds that the factories ended up giving their contribution to the education of women, according to the social roles that were expected of them, as did other institutions like church and family. Similarly, it shows that these women were not passive in the face of submissive working conditions and were capable of some tactics of deception.

Key words: education, women, work, textile industry.