Working Girls and Mothers in the City of São Paulo, 1915–30

The city of São Paulo, Brazil experienced exponential population and industrial growth during the Old Republic (1891-1930). Scholars have recognized the important role that working women played in São Paulo’s industrialization; however, previous scholarship fails both to understand the complexity of a woman’s decision to work and to emphasize the long-term implications of gender discrimination and inequality in the city’s labor market. This paper uses employment evidence on female participation in two prominent São Paulo firms, the Mappin department store and the Jafet textile factory, to highlight the gendered differences Paulistano working women faced. The paper first highlights the typical work experience for female workers in São Paulo and pays particular attention to married working women, who suffered even greater discrimination in terms of wages and employment.  Using wage data and a unique set of interviews my research highlights whether these married women continued in the labor force out of necessity or by choice. I find significant female participation among women of all ages and that the decision to remain in the workforce after marriage was more complex than just conforming to conventional positivist stigmas or to working out of necessity. My research then takes a more comprehensive look at gendered work experiences by quantifying wage differentials and educational attainment between boys and girls and then by quantifying wage differentials by cohorts between men and women. I find that gender wage differentials do not appear until around age twenty and that professional opportunity alone cannot explain the differences. The paper concludes by emphasizing the implications of these gender differentials on future Paulistano generations.