FRAGMENTS OF MEMORIES: WOMEN WORKERS IN THE GERMAN IMMIGRATION AREA (VALE DOS SINOS, RIO GRANDE DO SUL, LATE 19TH CENTURY AND EARLY 20TH CENTURY)

Abstract

We study the women workers of Vale dos Sinos, in Rio Grande do Sul, having as a starting point a collection of interviews, produced in the decade of 1990 and through which we try to analyze the women's narratives, which have as a common element, the Germanic descent and the job in the factories of the German immigration region. The women's narratives, which talk about their own experiences, the changes in their behavior, and the understanding of their gender identities, appear as elements of greater importance, insofar as these women's memories allow us to evaluate their motives, aspirations, frustrations, and also their own personal experiences, as far as working outside the home is concerned. Methodologically, the research is based on oral history understood in the perspective of Meihy (2006) in which it is not only a methodology, not only as a source or form of access to content, but a knowledge resource that involves communication between interviewer and interviewee, the orality and writing of the researcher in a perspective that involves the present and the past, as memory.