Women workers in the 25th of April: labour struggles in electronic components factories in 1974

Abstract

This article intends to rescue the history of thousands of women workers who fought for the right to work and for better living conditions during the Portuguese revolutionary period. We have chosen as object of analysis the sector of electronic components production, where the workforce was mostly women. For this purpose, we mainly selected the factories of the ITT group – Standard Electrical and Semiconductors –, Plessey and Applied Magnetics. With April 25, 1974, the possibilities for change were latent and were experienced by the working class, even though the historiography of this period is predominantly male. Contrary to this perception, we highlight how women not only participated, but were active agents in the struggles unleashed in the various spaces, with emphasis on the factory confrontations.