Gender Relations,the Gendered Division of Labour and Health: The Case of the Women Factory Workers of Rio Tinto,Northeast Brazil,1924-91

This article deals with the constitution of the subjectivity of women workers in Rio Tinto, Brazil. The problematic, based on their own words, was that women workers' bodies are simultaneously `beasts' and `machines', both animals and having `too little nature'. In documenting the way in which exploitative and oppressive work practices constitute the feminine body and mind, the article seeks to place the workers' double representation of themselves as the result of a psychological process, socially situated at the intersection of the relations of production and the social relations between the sexes. Pain and suffering are central features of this process.