Brazilian women have never been foreign to work. Prior to the beginning of the industrialization process, women were very active. The activities performed by women vary so much between different societies that it is not possible to assign or categorize any one activity as exclusively feminine. One of the principal characteristics of the development process of a society is the progressive isolation of those activities which are necessary for the production of goods and services from other activities. This is a consequence of the introduction of technological changes which make inevitable a separation in space and time of activities related to special production. The activity identified as work starts to develop more and more at specific places, in specific time intervals, and under specific contractual conditions. As the growing technical specialization made it necessary to make a separation between house and work, women were assigned house activities. In this sense it can be said that the introduction of the machine came to reinforce the concept that women's principal function was the administration of the house and the education of the children.