"Humble employees of large companies": crossing keeper women in the first third of the 20th century.

Abstract

The women hired by the Spanish railway companies in the first third of the 20th century constituted a significant number of workers, most of them crossing keepers. This group had the characteristics attributed to female work: part-time employment, compatible with housework and generating a “complementary” salary to that of the male breadwinner. Given the silence of companies’ documentary sources in this regard, the press is used to find out about their working conditions, which were characterized by exhausting workdays, a high accident rate and miserable wages. Likewise, the article analyses how the railway labour movement took into account their demands.