Dressmakers, maids, washerwomen and saleswomen: Women's work in the nineteenth century and the care for clothes (Rio de Janeiro, 1850-1920)

Abstract

Female wage labor transforms itself during the nineteenth century as capitalism develops. If, on the one hand, women are seen as consumers of goods, on the other, this consumption initiates a series of transformations in their lives. Women come out of the house specially to buy clothes. The garment industry, which starts from small ateliers, opens up space for new types of paid female work: saleswomen, dressmakers, hat makers. Women's work is multiplied in the care of the clothes and in the dressing of the elite women. But it is the maids, seamstresses and washerwomen, usually slaves, who will transform the kind of work done by women in the nineteenth century.