Abstract

Female industrial employment grew rapidly in the nineteen seventies, but the sexual division of labour remained very strong. This raises the possibility of women’s employment not being disproportionately reduced as a result of the economic crisis in the nineteen eighties. A study of a large electrical factory in São Paulo revealed that management had clearly discriminatory criteria for ion of workers to be dismissed, but in the absence of a change in the sexual division of labour, the reduction of women ‘s share of employment in the factory was merely short-term and cyclical. However, the labour force was restructured in other ways during the initial crisis period, 1981.