This paper intends to highlight the capacity that women workers of the working-class neighbourhood of Xabregas had to become visible, through written and visual historical sources, showing their world of work and everyday life, although they were predominantly illiterate, had large families and often many small children to care. We want to raise some questions: how was the real life of this working women and its representations? How did their world survive in a world male-dominated either by the employers and by their colleagues? How have been preserved the memory of this working women in this neighbourhood? The neighbourhood of Xabregas, in the eastern side of Lisbon, was one of the predominant locations of the industrialization of the Portuguese capital since the nineteenth century. Located on the banks of the river Tagus, there some cork, textile, milling or tobacco factories, among other industries, were established employing thousands of women. The boats arrived at the port, where they were loaded, the trains went to the north of the country on the line that began to be built in the middle of the century. A tram line connected the area to the centre of the city. The daily life of these women, characterized by the hustle and bustle of the workers who run to the factories, with the tall chimneys and the hiss of their sirens, would be immortalized in painting, literature and photography even since the nineteenth century. Among the women workers, those that worked in the tobacco industry in Xabregas stood out and stayed in the memory of its inhabitants. This working-class population has been quite demanding and socially interventive since the end of the nineteenth century, participating in mutualist associations and unions. As there was not yet a social security system, there was a great number of women in the mutualist associations, what demonstrate some concerns about health, maternity and old age of the women of the popular classes. Some private associations founded in the area an economic kitchen and two milk dispensaries for the poorest families. In its turn, the tobacco company founded in the twenties a maternity for working women and the wives of the working men. These social responses are also visible nowadays through images taken at the time. The representations of these working women let us to conclude that they created their specific world that broke away the ideal of the male breadwinner.

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Women workers,Daily life,Mutualist associations,Xabregas,Portugal