Women and poverty in the workers’ environment

If we split by gender the different productive activities of the workers in Los Hurones, whether paid or not, the tasks performed by women are visibilized. Their jobs included cleaning, getting and preparing food, sewing, washing clothes and work uniforms, looking after dependents, both in the family and in the community and in private homes; and also healthcare, teaching, and managing the telephone exchange and other services in the town. Women’s unpaid work is much larger than men’s.

This was much more evident in the hut shanties, where working and living conditions were harder. «I remember my mother cleaning and cooking. And my elder sister with a kid under her arm», says José Pan (Algar, 1946). As the families from the huts were needier, the bosses on the site sought young girls and teenagers there to work as carers and do housework. Lucina Linares (Jerez, 1937), in the photo above, gives details:

«My father worked as a gardener at the reservoir, one brother as a plumber, the other one with the dumper-trucks and my mother worked for the company sewing uniforms and hospital coats. The doctor suggested that I work in the hospital. Together with another girl I did the cleaning, helped with delivering babies… In the end I even gave injections and electrical stimulation, because it was necessary, and I learnt very quickly. Later the owners of the Portolés company took us to work in their house in Madrid. There was a maid, a cleaner and I did the cooking».